


I'm Dreaming Of A Green Christmas

by CelestiaTrollworth



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Gen, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-12 03:24:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 47,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9053227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelestiaTrollworth/pseuds/CelestiaTrollworth
Summary: Mestral will do just about anything for just about anybody, even when the workload approaches complete insanity. When everything from a closed highway to a major snowstorm gets in the way, he gets help from an unexpected source...and things rapidly go from the ridiculous to the sublime.
This is an excuse to take you all back to Christmas the way it was fifty years ago. I hope you enjoy.





	1. The Lists

**Author's Note:**

> Giving a tree a drink and taking a limb home is indeed a custom in most Slavic countries and their colonies in western Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, so is that garlic, onion, potato and salt cod chowder. As for the unfortunate pig head incident, one learns to tell the meat market that you don't want ALL of that pig you ordered for the barbecue...

Vulcan Consulate, Cathedral of Learning, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, December 23, 2261, 7:30 AM

 

Jim Kirk was not having a good day. Nyota Uhura was not having a good day. Spock was most especially not having a good day. After they departed San Francisco headquarters posthaste, Bones had spent the past few hours patching them up while he threatened to kill the lot of them. He would have threatened Ambassador Sarek, except the Vulcan dignitary was quite certain Amanda would take care of that for him a soon as she caught up with their impromptu relocation. “Do not trouble yourself, Doctor. I may survive if my sister and mother do not find out. However, I assure you my wife has a mean right hook.” Sarek shifted the ice pack over his cheek.

“Speaking of,” McCoy grimaced. “I thought Spock was scary in a fight.”

“I was attempting not to fight. Tellarite negotiations always require shouted insults. It was difficult to determine when the Capellan actually became angry and planned violence. Some degree of physical retribution was--”

“Father,” Spock intoned, “you threw him through a bulkhead.”

“He would still have been within arm's length of you otherwise. I could not permit that.”

“I tried to drown the lieutenant in the fountain,” Uhura sighed. “What was in that water?”

“Some intoxicant of unknown origin but certain effect.” Sarek squinted at his tricorder. “Dyrenium phosphate, judging by your uniform. Doubtless intended to disrupt negotiations, which it did handily.”

“You would think disabling a major enemy would have made things better, but nooooo, all it did was make the crazies come out of the woodwork,” Kirk groaned. “And then we get to be on Earth for two weeks at the end of December.”

“Twenty-nine major holidays,” Spock agreed, “all of which cause illogical behavior. We shall be spending the first week with the Uhuras in Nairobi, then we will return to the Embassy...”

Sarek began to wilt. “Assuming it is still standing after your mother finds out.”

Spock gave him a speculative look, thought for a moment more and said “There is the matter of James.” At his father's partially raised eyebrow, half buried in its surrounding bruise, he went on. “He is a toddler, is he not? And doubtless, being only half Vulcan as am I, he possesses the impulsivity of his human half with the strength derived from...ah, most of your side. He will, of course, not restrain himself from charging toward you upon your arrival, likely with great force.”

“Just so!”

Kirk snorted. “Are you two planning to let your little brother take the rap for--”

“The child's head is a bludgeon. For someone who nearly died as a newborn in the past, he has proven to be well-nigh indestructible from the day he kicked apart the fastening of his artificial womb and inadvertently chose his own birthday. A word of warning, Kirk, turn slightly to the side when he sees you. Otherwise, the consequences may be distressing.”

“Oh?... _Oh_.” He thought of the relative height of the toddler, who was growing as if his feet were in a bucket of enhancer. “That might be easier than all the mandatory fun of the holidays.”

“Happy Christyulekwanzikkah,” Uhura giggled.

There was a light rap at the door. Kirk groaned “Aw, now what? Oh. Sorry, fa'sa.”

Nick Mestral was, as usual, dressed like a Terran with a Vulcan day robe thrown on as a top layer. “You're all sitting here feeling sorry for yourselves, but I have a job for you.”

“We can't exactly go out in public,” Uhura said delicately.

“Yeah, you and Spock need to go to Nairobi anyway. Your shuttle's on the roof. Go spend a week with your people and why don't you get engaged while you're at it. The rest of us got this. Go. Shoo.” He waved them out of the room as Spock made a feeble attempt to bid a proper farewell. “They'll be fine and I'll take your mind off that fiasco. We're goingto Carbon Creek. Right now.”

“At least Amanda won't find me,” Sarek reasoned, and got up.

“Oh, she'll be along, but when she arrives there'll be too much going on to—Never mind. Just get in the transporter and let's get to my house. If nothing else, it'll be different misery.”

“When you put it that way,” Kirk shrugged.

 

Carbon Creek, Butler County, Pennsylvania, December 23, 1966, 7:30 AM

 

Morning was misty beyond the porch of the Pine Tree Bar and Grill. A soft mist of flurries and grayish furnace smoke sharp with sulfur half-hid the schoolchildren hurrying to the old brick school on the hillside. Three children burst out of the front doors, skittering toward the crossing guard at the corner. “--go to school when tomorrow is Christmas Eve!” the boy, who looked about six, complained.

“We get off until after New Year's,” one of the girls said, “whenever that is.”

“A week, idiot! We should have been off since Wednesday. It's not _our_ fault the stupid furnace was out. Why do we have to make up days?”

“It's only half a day!” the woman called from the steps of the diner. “You three settle.” She wiped her hands on her apron and shouldered the door to go back inside. “You'd think the nuns were going to draw and quarter all three of them. They really don't have to do anything and Sister Perpetua made cupcakes.”

The man who waited for her was tall, lanky, his dark hair thick and mussed. He sat at the counter with the morning paper, a handwritten list in a strange script and a stack of pancakes. “They're not happy, but it is convenient.”

She looked down at her own yellow legal pad with a long list on it. “Nicky, I have _no_ idea how this is all going to get done even with them not underfoot this morning. I put the potatoes on the back burner and put the minced garlic out to defrost. You're going over to get the tree, right?”

Without looking, he reached for the coffee she held out for him. The ads had his attention as he scanned down the page, comparing them to his list. “Soon as we pick up the lights. The dollhouse hasn't come in yet. I have no idea why. They might have to wait for Old Christmas for that.”

“I hope not. They might not think it's weird to get dollhouse furniture by itself. When we were little, we wouldn't have thought anything of it. One Christmas Mikey got guitar strings in his stocking because Daddy forgot to pick up the guitar at the last minute like he'd planned.” She looked up and hurried down the counter to refill the other man's cup. “Sorry, Billy, didn't realize you were low.”

“Neither did I, tell you the truth. One shift is enough for me any more. Getting old, Maggie.” He yawned. “Nick, I can check for the dollhouse when I go by the freight station. Are you getting the pig or am I?” He grinned, knowing full well Nick didn't want to deal with a whole dead animal.

“You get the lamb and pig, I'll pick up the cut tree and the lights. The lamb can be in your truck overnight since it won't be warm enough to spoil.”

“Might freeze. What else?”

“The new cord for that disc thing that goes with this tree.” He waved a hand vaguely at the diner's aluminum tree up front. “I'll get the baccala and Bud's space set. You can go by the A&P in Sewickley and see if they have those walnuts left for Mrs. Zovich and the chicken patties we're out of.”

“And swizzle sticks,” Maggie added. “And napkins. How did we use so many napkins?”

“The Rotary banquet. The gooey meatballs got us. We need more little sword toothpicks too.”

“Nicky, honey, I know you want to get this done while the kids are busy, but you really need to go to bed. You both look shot.”

“Even if there wasn't too much on the schedule, you two need the rest more than I do.”

“It's a _great_ idea to run a bar and grill and work the mine at the same time,” Billy agreed. He lit a cigarette and coughed. “I shoulda told him one shift was enough, but the damn slope belt...”

“Picked last night to let go. Ehhhhh, it was statistically due, but if it had waited till tonight we'd be down for the weekend and it coulda waited.”

“They'd have called us out.” Billy rubbed his eyes irritably. “Oh. Drinks for the Scouts. When the Pepsi guy comes, I need that extra two cases, cans if he has them.”

“At least he delivers. The sandwich buns. We have the ham baking but we forgot the extra buns. Grocery store list.” Nick scribbled again, a cluster of vines descending from one of the lines on the shred of notebook paper. Billy craned his neck to look.

“Just like my mother's old Christmas lists. Couldn't read those, either. What's this?”

“The note to get a gross of pierogi out of the freezer.” He pointed to bits. “Actually, it says 'big box potato cheese things thaw out.' We didn't have pierogi. Or cookie tables.”

“People talked about the old place like it was Heaven, but if it didn't have beer, pierogi or cookie tables, what the hell was going on with it?”

“My dad would have given a lot to get his hands on a piece of ground here. The soil isn't even that good by this world's standards, but compared to there it's wonderful.” Nick downed the rest of his coffee, went around the bar to kiss Maggie as she was setting up the next pot, scooped his keys from the back bar and was about to go out the side door when the fire siren roared. He and Billy stared at each other, incredulous. “Tell me that went off by accident.”

“You gotta be kidding me.” Billy got up with a groan. “Got plenty of caffeine to run on now.”

“Good thing, because it's getting cold out here. Except over there,” Nick added, peering down the road that descended the mountain. “I don't think it's cold over that way at all.”

Maggie followed them to the door. “Holy crap. Be careful, you two.” The phone was ringing, a distinctive series of short clatters that meant the fire department was on the line. “Pine Tree—They're on their way.” She set the phone down. “Mutual aid for Butler, it's a big one at the paint warehouse.”

“Great,” Billy moaned.

She watched them run to the fire station down the block. A few minutes later, the truck roared off down the hill with a load of men hanging all over the back for the five-mile ride into Butler. She shook her head, checked on the soup of the day and wished she could read Nick's handwriting reliably enough to do what she could off the list.

 

Billy glared at him. “No. Absolutely not. I got my chief hat on. You keep the water coming.”

“If there's toxic crud better me than--”

“You know you can't get cold and wet and that's what's going to happen if you get any closer.”

“Ain't sugar, won't melt,” he grumbled. The paint warehouse was, predictably, a roaring inferno already. Five other companies had come in to help from as far as North Hills and West Sunbury, their pumpers turning the street into a lake that was beginning to freeze. Unusual warmth and rain of early morning had turned to north wind and dubious sky. He hadn't taken time to meditate, nor to put on a heavier coat, and fatigue was getting in the way of keeping his temperature up. Everything on his body was designed to radiate heat as fast as possible, from his ears to his eternally hot hands. Back home on the Fire Plains, that was a good thing. In Butler, Pennsylvania in December, it wasn't.

Billy never let him forget his first Carbon Creek winter had almost been his last. The Asian flu had laid him out with pneumonia in a matter of hours. It wasn't unusual for a coal miner to have bad lungs and sicken easily, but most were older when that started. The severity of what had happened to him, and Billy's ability to guess his ears had a good bit to do with it, had caused Maggie, Billy and the town doctor to forbid him from running into any winter fires.

He stood by the pumper's instrument panel, watching the gauges and wondering about a better design. He set a fragment of his mind to think about how the inevitable leaks could be minimized so no one else would have to stand around a December street with water trickling down his neck in spite of his turnout coat, then he took his eyes off the gauges because staring at them was putting him into a stupor. Glance away, glance back, that worked better. The warehouse was beginning to steam instead of fume, which was always a good thing. A couple of forklift operators with more courage than sense had gone in early and removed most of the paint pallets from the areas distant from the fire, working closer as they could to deny the fire its fuel. At a little before ten, the Butler chief pronounced the incident dead and released all the other departments.

There was hose to drain and put up, a truck to wash and gear to clean. There was also a supermarket and a variety store across the street. Billy said “You remember your list. Go!”

“Here.” He handed Billy the wet turnout coat and trotted to the stores, well aware that he had a couple of wet stripes across his neck and knees. He found the walnuts—the last the store had—a couple of big packs of cocktail napkins that wouldn't be enough but would help, six packs of sandwich buns for the Scouts and, in the variety store, the last, more than slightly shopworn G.I. Joe Space Set. While he was paying for it, he overheard Bob the deputy sheriff, who had come in from the fire scene. “Man, what a mess up on the highway. Semi thought the road went through where it doesn't yet and got stuck, blocked the off ramp and there's all kinds of traffic trying to come through town wth this going on. If they don't get that interstate built pretty soon it's going to be the death of all of us what with the go here, now go through the middle of town, now swerve over that way. There must have been a dozen cars stuck in the mud where some joker moved the detour sign.”

“People traveling from far off,” he said. “Been there myself.”

“I forget you're not from here. Serbia, wasn't it?”

His answer had been brewed up years ago, literally, with his father-in-law over a couple of cold Iron Cities. “Yeah, I couldn't even drive a stick shift or read English when I got here. That far back in the woods where we were, things were all different. I can imagine if I'd run into all the construction sites back then. Bad enough when you're just going state to state.”

“You haven't had a lot of lost ones up at Carbon Creek, have you?”

“You'd be surprised. Maggie runs into more than me because she's always there in the daytime. They stop for directions and lunch and she gets them turned around right. Oh. What have you heard about a snowstorm?”

“Tomorrow evening, mostly east of the mountains? Mind, that's just what I heard from the state patrol, but my wife's brother works at the weather service at the airport. Got someone coming in?”

“Several. Stepson is on his way up from Florida and Father George and his family went to Philadelphia to see his sick grandmother. He's supposed to be back on the six o'clock tomorrow in time for midnight service and all.” It always made people look at him funny when he mentioned Father's wife and kids, but Orthodox priests were allowed to be married. The idea of a priest who wasn't married had flummoxed him at first, because that wasn't a survival strategy back home. There was a regular service schedule for the Terran religion, rather than a free-flowing on-call system, and Christmas Eve was one of the big occasions of the year. Father would need to be back well before midnight because of tasks he would need to complete himself. “He'll be on the six o'clock train. Do you think that's likely to be a problem?”

The cop's cheeks puffed in that curious human custom of silent dismay. “I'll have a better idea by this evening. Pat should be on shift then and he'll have the latest. Call me after dinner.”

“Thanks, Bob. I did not appreciate how much Maggie's dad did around town.”

“Even if he hadn't been all busted up like he was, Mike was amazing. You needed anything, he was there. This today makes me remember when Kovach's Garage burned down and he stayed at the fire station all night to keep the coffee going and the air bottles filled for all of them. You're taking up where he left off.” Bob's car radio crackled. “Oops, gotta go. Like I said, call me.”

“Got everything on the store list but the baccala,” he told Billy on the way home. “That I gotta look around some more for. Or call. I should call, huh?”

“Be easier than driving everywhere with time this short. Your English is good enough now.” Billy scratched his head. “How of all things did I forget the salt cod?”

“I meant to go down to the Strip and didn't get to, that's how. It's also how oh _shit_!” When he was learning colloquial English, contractions came first and that came second. “Slivovitz.”

Billy started to veer off the highway. “Guess we better not go to a liquor store in the fire truck.”

“Maybe not, but if you park down the block...” He turned in his seat and slid open the window. “Anybody else want any booze?”

The art of creeping out of a liquor store with a grocery bag full of assorted intoxicants had come far too naturally to a farm boy from Low Springs. He distributed the proceeds to the crew, who put away their purchases in shirts or inside pockets. “What your people get drunk on if alcohol don't work?” Billy asked as he turned onto 138 to go up the hill. “I can suck it down like I got a hollow leg, but eventually it'll get me just the same.”

“I could drink all of that and all I'd get would be heartburn. What we had on the farm, not supposed to admit we would ever want it, is blue ale. Tastes a lot like slivovitz, starts the same way with blue juice made out of fruit pretty close to plums, and everybody drinks that even little kids, but when you do the adult stuff there's mint in it too and a whole lot of sugar, which is what gets us going. Well, that and chocolate, but we never had that back home.”

“High on a Hershey bar,” Billy grinned. “Well. Back at the fort. Don't forget the tree.”

He didn't, but it appeared half the town had because four other people showed up to buy trees while they were putting the truck away. By the time he extricated himself, took the liquor and tree in the back door and showered, Maggie was half seas under in the lunch rush. He took over in the kitchen while she dealt with an unexpectedly full house. “By the way,” she panted as she hustled to the counter, “Bud got in trouble. Wrong words to 'Jingle Bells.'”

“I warned him that shotguns and rabbits are not involved in the church version,” he sighed. “I will talk to him. Sister Philomena likely did already.”

“A lot,” Bud agreed, shuffling into the kitchen with his bookbag. He hung his coat on the pegs by the back door and washed his hands. “But she let me have a cupcake anyway.”

He flipped the hamburgers on the grill and slapped cheese on three of them. “Let me guess. She didn't want to call you out on the words, but she has to.”

“Yeah.” Bud sounded hopeless, which was normal when he got out of school. Going to St. Basil's was better than when he'd tried the public kindergarten the year before, but not by much. From what the principal said, his half-brother Jack had been just the same. “I tried to be good as long as I could, and then.”

The girls were smirking at his discomfort. Nick cocked a warning eyebrow at them, and they washed up and began to roll flatware in paper napkins for the evening party. “You were thinking...?”

Bud began to set out the dishes Nick would need when the orders were ready. “Dad, we had gone over that math fourteen times. Fourteen. By actual count. It's not even times tables, it's dumb old addition and we all know it backwards and forwards, even the ones that had trouble at first. We sang 'Jingle Bells' every day for two weeks and then at the program. If it hadn't been for the stupid furnace we wouldn't have been in school today at all, and I don't believe Sister wanted to teach any more than we wanted to be there. She has church things to do and even if theirs are different it's still a lot in not much time. We could have helped with that, or whatever else.” He began to reach for the handle on the deep fryer, sighed and backed off. “I'm too little for anything.”

“As my mother used to say, life's a long song, little one, don't be too quick to the chorus.” The first cheeseburger was medium-rare; he scooped it onto a bun and let Bud bring the lettuce and tomato while he poked at the ones to be served well done. “That one gets double pickles.--If you can't pay attention, try to be quiet. If you can't be quiet, try not to be too interesting. We need a cold ham and cheese on wheat, lettuce, tomato, mayo, coleslaw on the side.”

“That I can do!” He did, as expertly as most Vulcan children would have and with an eye to making the sandwich esthetically pleasing as well as nutritionally functional. Nick took over to cut the diagonal slices. If only Bud were older, if he could help more... “After lunch we'll put the tree up. I wonder why there are so many customers today.”

“Wreck on the highway where it runs into the new interstate,” Maggie grabbed the burgers and hustled back for the ham. “Detours sent people up here. There must be a dozen already--” she delivered the ham platter, “and the cops say they're having a bad time getting everyone to understand to go through Butler and up the river, not up this way.”

“Worse yet,” the state trooper at the counter said, “there's a pile-up by the fire scene now where even more got confused. We're going to have to run people down the back streets. At least tomorrow is Saturday and there won't be workday traffic getting in the way, too.”

“Good luck with that, Rick. Merry Christmas!--If that road ever gets finished, it'll be so nice. Less than half an hour to Forbes Field.” Maggie rang up the cop and handed another order back. “I have the three stock pots ready for the baccala whenever it gets here.”

Nick guffawed in spite of himself. Several years before, she had tired of the eternal arguments about how much garlic and potato needed to stew with salt cod. Anyone who came to the Knights of Columbus banquet would see tureens labeled “Too Much,” “Not Enough” and “Right.” He thought “Not Enough” would do nicely if baccala had to exist in the diner.

The crowd began to thin a bit, though there was still a parade of people flowing in the door to pick up takeout orders. Billy ran in once with a bag of paper plates. “Nothing on the noon train,” he said. “He checked. It'll be on tomorrow's, might be second section. There's a problem with the pig.”

The fire department generally roasted a small pig on Christmas Eve, using the barbecue pit behind the bar. “Same as that other year?” Maggie muttered. Billy nodded solemnly. “Oh, dear.”

“The kids haven't noticed. Man, I miss your dad.”

Nick shot his eyes sideways to where Bud and the girls were dutifully wrapping flatware in a last-ditch effort to be good while Santa might still notice. There were benefits to the propagation of Terran myths, after all. “It _is_ already deceased...?”

“Oh, yeah, just not...unrecognizable.”

On his first Carbon Creek Christmas, his father-in-law had forgotten to specify that the dead pig needed to be beheaded before the fire department picked it up. Some of the town children had noticed and, unlike situation comedies from television, hilarity did not ensue. “Fire ax?”

“Yeah. I haven't had the nerve to take care of it yet.”

“Grocery bag,” Nick said. “Over the head first, I mean, so no one sees you, ah...”

“Got it.” Billy disappeared out the back door. In a moment, there was a substantial dull whump. He leaned back in. “Mission accomplished. It'll be, um, in the front of my truck. I'm going after the chicken patties, look for the baccala and get...uhhhhh, whatever else is on the list.”

“Got stuck in traffic,” Bonnie their waitress gasped as she rushed in. “I ran down to Mom's and it took me a solid hour to get back up the hill! I am so sorry. Looks like lunch is handled.”

“Yes, but don't worry about it. I was on the fire call that seems to have started the whole mess. We still need you. I have a task list this long and the banquet starts at six.”

“Six!” Maggie yelped. “I swear I thought it was seven!”

“Dad, the tree?” Bud and the girls were standing on the stairs looking hopeful. He nodded and fetched the bundled pine from the truck. He snipped the twine with his pocket knife on the way up and squeezed through their door to where the holder already sat. One good bang of the trunk on the floor usually... “Oh dear,” Bud said as diplomatically as a six-year-old could.

“Indeed.” When he had put his name on the fire department's tree list, he hadn't thought of picking the tree up earlier because hardly anyone in the Serbian church put the real ones up much before Christmas Eve. They would be up until Old Christmas on the sixth of January, and the flammability of rapidly dessicating pine had been demonstrated more than adequately on any number of occasions. Unfortunately, the rest of town had raided the tree lot first, leaving this five-foot study in sinuous curves and missing branches. When he plunked it into the holder, it leaned precariously no matter which way it was turned. Given past years' misadventures with a fluffed-out Scotch pine in a very small living room, the tie-offs from the curtain rods were a must.

The kids leapt at the box of lights, eagerly scanning the wires as he had taught them. As he had feared, the mice had been rather active. He had snagged one string at the variety store after the fire those would have to do unless more appeared tomorrow. “Isn't Uncle Mikey coming in?” Patty asked a he tried to wrap the lights around the top without dislodging the tie-off.

“He and Aunt Gloria will be along very late on Christmas night. He had a chance to work tonight and tomorrow.” Garland. Lots of garland. Maggie's father had clued him in on that during his first Christmas. Enough garland and tinsel would hide anything a tree was missing. The crumpled lead icicles had scared him, so he had loaded up on the new space-race Mylar ones. Vulcans were uncommonly lead-sensitive and he couldn't take chances with the kids.

The three children were busy unpacking the ornaments, all of which seemed to be not only glass but also suicidal. Half of them seemed to have loose tops or sharp edges, so he stood by with a bottle of glue and crossed fingers. The inevitable drops and breaks took out two of the round discount store globes, but not the few delicate ones Maggie's dad had brought across the ocean.

It was strange that the Serbo-Croatian border seemed so far away when Vulcan was light-years removed. He knew it made no sense, but when he worked at night he looked up at 40 Eridani on his way, as if he could see what his parents and brothers and sisters were doing on the farm. The few return communications he had received had been puzzling: none was dated more than a few hours after he had let the rest return without him. T'Mir had informed him that he would be officially listed as lost for the time being, but that she had personally visited his parents to give them the real story. There had been one brief message from them congratulating him on his bonding and, in his mother's hand, expressing approval that he had the courage to marry a human, fascinating as they were. “You are still exploring, little one,” she had said. “So is your mate. The flow of time is greatly altered for you. Do not be concerned.” It figured that the communication had come through an unfamiliar, secure channel officially, the High Command disavowed any knowledge of time travel when practically every crew knew it happened on a daily basis. Of course, the High Command didn't believe anyone but a Master of Gol could manage a meld, and Mother had taught all of her children as soon as they could understand.

If time really wasn't passing fast for them...but there was no logic in such wishes. “Kaiidth, but that they could see these,” he said under his breath. They cherished the numerous grandchildren already on the farm, including his oldest brother's who were half Betazoid, and these would be treated no differently for having round ears. Family...since o'samekh Mike's death that spring, brother Mikey was all the family Maggie had in the country. They saw him two or three times a year, because he was always hustling for his next gig in Philadelphia. Bass players got no respect in the best of times, which these weren't; jazz had taken a heavy hit from rock and roll. Mike hadn't been around since his father died, and Nick strongly suspected money was the only reason since no one was angry. He would have to talk to Mikey—maybe he could talk his brother-in-law into coming home and helping out at the diner; Pittsburgh had a decent amount of music jobs. _One more job I don't need on this list_ , he thought _but how can I_ _ **not**_ _do it_?

The biggest surprise he had planned wasn't going to happen. Maggie had eyed up the yellow house down the block for ages, ever since he and Stron had rented it when they first came to town. It had been Billy's mother's house until she moved to her daughter's. There had been a surprise chunk of patent money Maggie didn't know about, so he had bought it in October and imagined he could do a little work here and a little there and make a Christmas present of it. The way things had gone that fall had left too little free time. The tiny apartment over the bar had been enough for just Maggie and Jack, but it creaked at the seams with five people. He had cherished a vision of leading Maggie over to the house after the kids unwrapped their gifts...not even Old Christmas would be enough time.

“Too much,” he muttered, “too much. I have no idea how Mike managed all of this. What the--Somebody at the back door?”

“Yeah, me,” Nick's own voice called from the back. “Trust me, I need us. I brought help.”

And he had.


	2. Preparations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even Bones doesn't mind the trip since his atoms are intact and only time gets scrambled. A lot of people are doing a lot of thinking, but most of them aren't acting...yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise there's a reason for the pig head. 
> 
> After va'Pak, every Vulcan woman who could get pregnant did, plus our usual time bandits raided the past for people who would have died. In The Gathering of the Remnant, James was a severely premature son of Sarek and Amanda who disappeared after his birth...into the future.

Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania, December 23, 2261, 8:15 AM

 

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it.” Nick sipped his coffee and pointed to the projection. “Kirk, you look human and can drive a vehicle. Sarek, you don't look human but what the hell, it's Carbon Creek, nobody will care, and you can drive a vehicle. Chekhov, do you know the custom for bringing home the oak branch?”

“Yes, sir! I have never done it myself, sir. That is my father's job so far. Could you say how is you want it done, so I don't make a mess doing it like a good Russian?”

Though Nick's expressions were muted, Kirk saw vague embarrassment. “You, ah, wish the tree a good Christmas, give it a drink and ask it for a branch it isn't using. My father-in-law Mike never chopped down the whole tree for a log to burn, just took a dead branch because we didn't have a fireplace. It's the first Christmas—he died that June, you see.”

“Ah. If you want I should get a tree drunk and bring home a branch, I'm your man, sir. Is anyone in town going to be, um, nervous about a Russian?”

“They'll think you're a refugee. We had a lot of them. That year, we had...hmmm, how to phrase this so it doesn't ruin the scenario...a lot more.”

“Fa'sa, I dislike the sound of that,” Sarek said as delicately as a diplomat could.

“Oh, trust me, kid, I would have been nervous if I had been in any condition to think about what was happening. As usual, time here will not pass while we're there. When we walk in, at the time Chi has identified as optimal, there will be thirty-three hours to Christmas and a lot to do.”

“Finishing a holiday task list sounds like a relief after what we've been into,” Bones muttered.

“Except,” Sarek said, and turned at the sound of the door. “Ah. Hello, Mother.”

The lovely, if intimidating, pillar of Sarek's mother imposed herself upon the room. “We were delayed on account of some _disturbance_ that took place at the reception last night. We had not planned to attend, but my presence was requested at Federation headquarters,” Rana said. “The Shore Patrol appeared to be heavily involved and there were several inquiries as to my son's whereabouts, without being specific. I properly told them he was in his quarters, mildly but annoyingly ill with a common cold, and they went up to speak with Silek, who is now trying to pretend he is not amused that anyone would think he had thrown a member of the Capellan royal family...through a bulkhead?”

Kirk decided to step in. Rana, when displeased, was slightly less scary than the warp core. “Ambassador, the Capellan had knocked me and my ship's doctor here to the ground and was about to do the same with Spock.”

“Using me as his weapon,” Chekhov said with his best woebegone expression. “Swinging me by my feet. It was werry unpleasant.”

“Before you pass judgment, Mother, one of the Capellans had adulterated the fountain with a neurotoxic agent, believing it would affect others more than them. They were mistaken. Also, there _is_ the matter of your having punched a Klingon some time ago,” Sarek added with his best innocence.

“But really, through the bulkhead! Spock only threw one of them into the hall, and he made use of the doorway.” Rana was no longer trying to mask her own amusement. “I was unconscious at your delivery, Sarek, and have often had cause to wonder whether T'Pau dropped you on your head.--I understand there is a temporal difficulty, Daddy?”

“I was wondering when you'd pay attention to your o'samekh, but then, _he's_ the Vulcan ambassador the the Federation and _I'm_ just an old ambassador to Earth emeritus...” Nick couldn't have looked more martyred.

“Your task list, o'samekh'li,” Sarek prompted in gratitude for the interruption.

That was laying it on thick, and Nick enjoyed it for a minute. “Just so. All you need to help with is a holiday banquet, a fire department pig roast, a church lamb barbecue, a Boy Scout brunch, a children's church Christmas party and a series of critical, upsetting events the details of which I cannot reveal. You will also need to help Maggie and our waitress Bonnie manage a Lions' Club Christmas Eve brunch. On Saturday I can sell the last of the fire department's Christmas trees while other-me takes a break to actually go to the kids' parties. When that-me and now-me are together, if anybody asks, I'm my brother Goran.”

“Uncle Goran _would_ be amused,” Rana grumbled. “The man had no emotional control.”

“You wish the whole planet were as hardcore as a few of the ShiKahri. My people never were. You know now it's possible to refrain from homicide and still enjoy life. Goran showed you that. He could be happy and still not get into trouble. Don't be such a popsicle.”

The obvious implication, boosted by the mental image Nick let slip, caused Kirk to struggle with the coffee he was trying to swallow: frigid, with a stick up her...To his surprise, Rana half-smiled. “Is it permissible to bring Arre? Mother has yet to meet her, correct?”

“Correct. Chi's mate thinks that's a fine idea. Where's the son-in-law?”

“Here.” Skon wiped his feet on the doormat and walked in from the porch with toddling Arre hanging onto his pants leg. “The resettlement committee had a meeting. Solkar is at work, correct?”

“He'll catch up with us at the proper time. So will Amanda, and she knows to bring James. By that time, what's left of that shiner should have faded and you'll have plausible deniability.” Nick flipped an image to show the layout of town. “Some people in town will know who you obvious Vulcans are and won't have a problem. The rest don't care because even our humans all have some story about being on the run and landing in Carbon Creek for work. However, there will be outsiders coming through--” he pointed out the main street, “because of confusing detours from highway construction. If you got ears like mine and go out, wear a hat. You'll want one. It's snowing. Women wore babushkas back then anyway and men wore hats outdoors when it was that cold. Speaking of which, I replicated us some suitable gear, so everybody suit up and I'll fill you in on your jobs.”

Five minutes later, Kirk was comfortably dressed in well-worn jeans, boots, a flannel shirt, lined canvas jacket and a cap bearing a mining logo. “Nothing hurts. I think I like this time already.”

“You wouldn't if it got really cold. Polarfleece hadn't been invented yet and Mylar wasn't used much. We just put on more layers.--Sorry about the dress, Rana, but pants on women older than teenagers weren't a big thing yet. You get away without high heels to work the diner, anyhow.”

“These nylon leg coverings are extremely impractical for warmth,” she agreed. “So?”

“Half the people in town would understand Old Syrannite, but I shanghaied you because you can do English. Awkward is fine. They'll think you're greenhorns.”

“It may indeed be awkward for James,” Sarek mused. Nick invited comment with an eyebrow. “So many of us carried his bag around that he has absorbed not only the customary Standard from his mother and Golic from me, but also a remarkable amount of Capitol-dialect Romulan.”

“Eh, if the old people run into him they'll just think he's cute and speaks Novy Kahr Serbian with a thick accent. I'd be more worried about his having picked up the other parts of your vocabulary.” Even Bones gave in to a snicker. They had all discovered the depths of Sarek's linguistic knowledge in stressful moments, thanks to a control-sapping neurotoxin. “On the other hand, we all swore like sailors when we weren't in mixed company. Rana, your first job when we arrive is to show up at the diner and help your mother and Bonnie with the late afternoon crowd and the Knights of Columbus banquet. Here's a copy of the menu we had back then so you can study it. You'll have to handle platters with meat on them, but she won't make you cook it.”

“I had to eat gagh to avoid war with the Klingons,” Rana intoned. “Incidental contact is minor.”

“Jim, you get to help finish roasting the Knights of Columbus pig, run a batch of errands for me, spend the night, set up the Lions Club breakfast, the Boy Scout lunch, the kids' church party and then things get interesting but I can't say how. You up for that?”

“I was going to be bored for two weeks. A day like this sounds...like you say, interesting.”

“Leonard, our doctor's out of town until Christmas morning. You help Billy and Jim with the barbecue or tend it while they do what they need to and then take care of...the other stuff that happened. That's a period-correct doctor's bag with room for your hypos and tricorder...well, the new one I just stuck in there, it's the upgrade, so sue me. You know how that goes, take care of people and try to conceal anything twenty-third century you have to do. Then-me had salvaged the med chest from the wreck, and I'll restock it on our way.”

“Ah jeez,” Bones whimpered.

“Man up, it's not like a slingshot, not even getting on a shuttle or going through a transporter. It's just stepping through an energy being's projection to—that's not helping, is it?” Bones shook his head vigorously. “Like walking through a door. I do it all the time. Skon, tonight you're at the church helping the old ladies set up the service. Most of them can't see real well and they all speak Serbian or Croatian better than English—oh, wait, it's you, that'll take you five minutes to figure out. Pavel, you'll be with him tonight. You don't have to stay when they do their service--”

“But may I?” Chekhov asked softly. “I would wery much like that.”

“I forget,” Nick said with a tiny smile. “You believe like them. You'll know how to do what they need. They'll be so happy. Most of them have grandsons your age they haven't seen in ages. By now Mrs. Zovich has her nut rolls in the oven. Those will be over in the parish hall. She'll show you.”

“I like this already, sir!”

“Arre, you get to see Grandma Maggie today. Speak Standard to her, yes?”

“Ha, fa'sa,” the toddler beamed. “Yes!”

“Ehhhh, never work with kids or animals. We're as ready as we're going to be. I want to take care of this so it's all done when Zora gets in.”

The Vulcans filed out, Bones began to rummage in his doctor's bag, and Kirk stood back with Nick. “What you mean is, you're glad to spend the holidays with Zora, but you can't resist...”

“In this or any other universe I will always... _always_...do anything for Maggie,” Nick agreed. “Damn, kid, I'm transparent. You know how I feel about Zora too, don't you?”

“Worshiping the ground under her feet, if I read it right. She knows, eh?”

“She knows. I don't...I mean, that bedroom, that's then-me, I wouldn't, um...but when it comes to being able to see Maggie, even for a little while, that will never change. I know very well how fortunate I am. The Guardians will always be honest with me about when I can and can't go. This time, it isn't self-indulgence, it's...” he cocked his head at Kirk. “a good thing I had no idea back then. We could use Spock as well, but they assure me he is needed in Nairobi.” He took a bundle from his jacket pocket and flicked through it. To Kirk's surprise, it was a pile of replicated green American banknotes from the mid-twentieth century. He divided it and peeled a few bills from the smaller part. “Here. Walking-around money for you and Leonard, and I'll distribute to the others as well. They tell me this won't make any unwanted difference to the timeline.” He tapped the thicker part against his palm. “In fact, a lot depends on that. Shall we?”

 

Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania, 1:25 PM December 23, 1966

 

“Of course you knew,” then-Nick sighed gratefully. “And you brought the cavalry.”

“I did. I'll distract the kids. You warm up and go to bed. You can get up for the banquet. Anybody asks, you're Goran. Or I am, if we're together. Swap shirts so I'll be you at work.”

“You don't have to...nah, you want to.” Kirk watched him wobble, searching for an excuse, as he motioned them in and up the back steps to the apartment. “Pig's been on two hour and fifteen minutes. It's right on time. We're mining Section 17 Left off A North mains, just finished 7 Left and we're on to 8 Left on the other side of that fault. Remember the left-side roof bolter wing is out and you'll need to let the guys come up with the freestanding bolter.”

“Got it. Go. To. Bed. Even if it's an hour or two--” later-Nick shrugged into the worn flannel his younger self had just doffed, “it's better than not. You have no business around moving equipment in your state. Hot shower, too, _now_. You're still hypothermic even with working the kitchen.”

“You don't have to tell me twice. Do I get to meet everyone?”

“When you wake up. We'll be here until Christmas Day. If we start having old home week, you won't get to bed.” He led the party toward the apartment's living room, where the kids were still decking the halls with paper chains the girls' kindergarten had made. “Look who's here. Uncle Goran, Uncle Francis, Aunt Zorana, Uncle John, little Mary Grace and your cousins Jim and Len.”

“Arry,” Arre introduced herself proudly, close enough. She toddled toward the tree. “Pretty.”

Bud ran over to the group, wide-eyed. “Did you come all the way from Novy Kahr?”

“We did,” Rana said. “Goran is very tired because he was...driving. From the airport.”

“The highway must be scary. Sister had us pray for travelers and a lot of people have been stopping at the diner.” Bud eyed her suspiciously, but said nothing more. The girls stood back and smiled, doubtless sensing that the newcomers were not to be touched casually.

“Nicky? What's going--” Maggie came halfway up the steps. Kirk caught his breath; his great-grandmother was instantly recognizable and his heart seemed to leap in his chest thinking _Mine, kinswoman_. She pressed a hand to her own heart and beamed. “I had no idea you were coming in!”

“We believed you might need the help.” Rana glided down the steps to her mother.

Kirk watched the two of them, so very alike in height and build, as Rana held out her crossed palms and Maggie took them. Maggie had lightened her hair; he suspected it was really chestnut brown like Rana's artistically arranged French twist that managed to cover her ears. Maggie noticed the toddler clinging to Rana's hem and said, very quietly, “You're from when? That isn't Lia. Yours?”

“2261. She is ours, Mary Grace. At home, Arre. Completely unexpected and welcome.” She urged Arre forward. “Your grandmother.”

The tiny copy of Rana eyed Maggie's ears, gave the matter deep thought and jumped into her arms. “I, Gamma.” She looked into shining eyes much like her own. “Gamma ouye.”

“Mary Grace...oh, my grandmother's name. You're the beautiful one. Four for you now, Rana honey?”

“Yes. Two and two.” Rana thought about it, decided she could say quietly: “Ten grandchildren and as of our now, four great-grandchildren. Pictures for later, alone.” The front door jingled. “You are about to have more customers and I seem to have arrived in a suitable work dress and apron.”

“You--” Maggie shook her head and giggled. “Whatever you do other than silversmithing, I suspect waiting tables is definitely not part of it. Never mind! I need all the help I can get today.”

Bonnie waved that she had that table of customers, so Kirk began to follow the women down the stairs without hurrying. “This one,” Rana said under her breath. “Lena's grandson. He had no idea until last month.”

“It's obvious now. Oh. This was going to be such a terrible Christmas, my dad died in June you know, and he did everything. Poor Nick, he's been working so hard he hasn't had a chance to enjoy anything this year. I must be dead at least two hundred years, and Nicky still thinks of me and wanted to...” She gave Kirk the proper inspection. “So much like Lena. May I hug you?”

It was suddenly what he wanted most. “Would you?” The shock was not being enveloped in loving arms; it was Maggie's mind brushing by as gently as Spock's, all warmth and calm, an oasis. She wanted to burst into joyous tears, but they were held back politely until she knew whether he minded. “Oh, look at you. You look just like...I'd better not say it, but welcome. Welcome home.”

The adults sorted themselves rapidly; even asleep, Nick of the past would know what his smaller children were doing, Arre, in need of a nap, decided to crawl into bed with her grandfather even if he was his younger self, and Skon decided he would help the older kids decorate until it was time to meet the guild women at church. Billy was watching the roasting pig until he needed to go to the mine. At a quarter to three, Nick of the twenty-third century shouldered his work jacket, picked his dinner bucket and thermos off the back kitchen counter, kissed Maggie and went off to the mine down the block as if he were still doing it every day. “He looks good,” Maggie said, “but I can tell he's older. Still, he seems well and content. She must be good to him.”

“She is wonderful to him,” Rana said. “Had you picked her yourself you could not have done better. I suspect you actually did have a hand in it. She is a ship pilot, from here in town, v'tosh k'turr but in all respects admirable. She wished to come, but thought it might be awkward for you.”

“Bless her! I would like to meet her if it can happen. I know they say I can't go forward because it would change too much, but the blessing that you can all come back to me...” The door jingled again. “Bonnie needs a cook and another waitress. Shall we?”

Kirk remembered the barbecue out back. He and McCoy found a half-asleep Billy trying to tend a spit bearing a young pig. “Oh, good. Nick explained, Jim, Len, it's okay. You know how to do this?”

Flat honesty was refreshing, so he returned it. “Not a clue.”

“The spit is motorized. Make sure it keeps turning and when it looks dry, pour some of the special sauce over it. When you know you got it, one of you—Jim, I guess, here's my truck keys, it's that blue Chevy in the driveway across the street--can leave to run the errand list. It'll be ready to come off the spit at six-thirty and it's kinda heavy, so two guys will need to lift an end apiece and carry it in. Maggie knows how to handle it from there. Usually, the K of C guys will come over to help carry it. They'll get it to the main table and start carving.”

He looked around and saw nothing but a six-pack of brew. “What special sauce?”

Billy punched the top of a beer can with a small triangular instrument. “This. I wasn't even drinking any because I'm so tired I'd be on my face, and I got a shift to put in.” He poured the beer evenly over the turning carcass. “Thanks, Jim. I hope you have fun.”

“Wow, you're going in the mine like that?”

“Do it all the time. Somebody has to,” Billy said over his shoulder. “And Nick's in there.”

Kirk sat on the concrete blocks beside the barbecue pit, up against the block garage wall. Even in the light cold wind the spot was sheltered and pleasantly warm. Bones soon joined him. “If anybody had asked me what I'd be doing today, roasting a pig wouldn't have been high on the list.”

“Wait, you know how to do this?”

“That's one tradition we hung onto. We use a replicated pig, but we still barbecue over an open pit every chance we get. Best thing to baste with is bourbon. I guess we can make do.” He inspected the beers, shrugged and found the opener. “Always wondered what that would be like.”

Kirk waited for the results of the taste test. “So?”

“Pretty decent, actually. I'm surprised.” He glanced around. “I didn't get to look around much before. This...this looks a lot like home.”

Kirk leaned forward, popped a beer for himself and settled his shoulders against the warm concrete block. “I gotta drive, so just one. You're not even going to complain about the Vulcans?”

Bones shook his head slowly. “Not today, I guess. A lot happened in the last couple years, you know? They have their people back now, but they still can't go home, and the ones who were saved the first time...they're different. They've gone off-planet and changed how they look at the rest of the galaxy, and I don't think that's going away.”

“I don't think so either. Who knows what Spock would have been like if it hadn't happened.”

“To be left with nothing, and still work the way they all did, no logic to it from my angle, only blind faith...I actually admired him for a minute or two. Just don't let him know that.” Bones eyed him oddly. “So. You found these relatives of yours. It had to be a shock.”

“Yeah, whoever woulda thought I'm part Italian?” He wasn't going to get away with that. “If you'd have told me, back when you smuggled me onto the ship, that some of those Vulcans Spock was saving were mine...but damn. Now I got to meet Dad's grandmother and she's actually pretty cool too.”

That was a good excuse for Len to get a fresh armful of wood from the stack, sweet hints of cherry and maple, so he could talk with his back turned. “She's lived hard.”

“She has. Nick explained. I should say they did, since her soul is right there with him in our time.”

“I see where you get some of that resilience of yours. In a weird way it makes me feel better about the stupid stuff you get yourself into. There's a lot of both of them in you.”

“If I met Mom's people, I wonder what they'd be like. The few times I saw them, they weren't thrilled and didn't seem interested in hanging around longer than they had to.”

“Heh.” Bones shook his head as he sat down again. “My people had been around that little town since who knows when. Everybody knew who to tell if I acted up. It takes a village to raise a child, and that was my village that did its best. It was my own damn fault when I married the wrong woman and got to drinking about it.”

“Your mother's still alive. Why don't you go visit while we're on Earth?”

“Oh, wouldn't she be happy. Jocelyn won't show her face in town any more...Joanna would be glad if I went there instead of having her come to San Francisco where she really doesn't know anybody. It just makes me wonder whether if I go, anybody'd be pitying me behind my back.”

“If they are, they're damn fools.”

Bones chuckled. “You're Nick's, all right.” He considered the fire. “You and Pointy are cousins and he and Maggie are where you're related, and now, it's maybe my imagination, but I see the ways you work together. Both of you can look me right in the eye and convince me to do some appallingly stupid stunt, and I'll go hook, line and sinker every time. I thought that was just the S'chnT'gai, but looks to me like the whole bunch is--” he spun a forefinger at his temple.

“Want to hear something even stranger? I got so used to having the rest of those maniacs around me to rely on that it feels odd to be here without them. How can I do a crazy time trip without Ru?”

“He's the kind of scary that makes you feel safe if he's on your side. You miss Spock.”

“Even more. Yes. Both of him.”

“The old ambassador kind of grew on me. I can say that because he'll never hear it.”

The idea forced a snort from Kirk. “Do we know that for sure, the way time is?”

“Aw hell, just put my brain in a blender why don't you? At least it didn't hurt to come back here. It really was like walking through a door into yesterday. If I could...”

“You gonna ask?”

“I don't know. Lot to think about there, but...the Guardians have explained that some people die in the past, even very young, because they did what they were supposed to do and were supposed to go on, whatever that means. For the rest, if we ask, the answer might be 'yes.' I did ask about Spock's baby sister, but they said no. I looked at her file. Her birth defect is still incompatible with life. Anencephaly was not related to being a hybrid, either, just lousy luck.”

“Kids are so fragile,” Kirk mused. “Or maybe not as much as I think.” His grandmother—his _grandmother_ , Magdalena, who would ace medical school by the time she was twenty, dump her obnoxious Terra Prime first husband, live a life in and out of stasis boxes, remarry happily, go through hell on Tarsus 4 and find her way back—was upstairs, a cute six-year-old with long silky hair, decorating her Christmas tree in happy innocence.

He doubted she understood how different her father was; the men in town seemed to be stoic by nature, fond of their children but not demonstrative. For that matter, a lot were unusually tall, lanky and possessed of eyebrows that seemed to get thicker and spikier with age. When they passed by on their way to the mine, they teased one another, the oldest among them speaking broken English, all of them using nicknames. One of the outgoing shift called “Merry Christmas, Bun!” to Nick, who returned the greeting. Nick had already explained his own nickname; the ears made him Bunny Rabbit and finally just Bun. “Anybody knows me by that name, I know they're old-time Carbon Creek.”

He was nudged out of his reverie. “If you want to run those errands, I don't mind sharing beer with a dead pig, especially not one that's starting to smell pretty darn good.”

“You'd like some thinking time.” Bones nodded. “You got it. Stay out of trouble.”

“Ha!” the doctor snorted after him as he went to find Billy's truck.

The truck wasn't locked. He had the feeling most people in Carbon Creek didn't bother. For that matter, there was a spare key in the ashtray among a lot of Billy's crumpled cigarette butts. Nick had left him a hand-drawn, annotated map of a brief road trip. He had been around the local area in his own time, when the population was much smaller and the woods more grown in several of the small towns had disappeared entirely, and the heights where the spiky Vulcan apartment blocks had risen after va'Pak were presently farm fields. The main road was in the same place, although it was narrow and had no driving aids. The notes made it excruciatingly clear that even though the road down the mountain was the shortest way to Butler, he couldn't go that way because of the construction and traffic backups and would need to take a longer drive, through another small town that might have most of the list's requests. He eased out the clutch and shifted up at the top of the mountain, relieved that he hadn't repeated his galloping horse stle of driving—Spock might never let him live that one down, but what starship captain planned for a vehicle cribbed from an American design of the 1930s? The back road was all but empty except for--

\--Nick's black truck, blowing by him like a bat out of hell. TThe driver sailed by, looking straight ahead, impassive...except for flipping the ta'al at him. “You're every bit as annoying as your kid,” he grumbled, watching Sarek negotiate a curve and disappear far ahead. A small thump from the floorboards got his attention. The grocery bag hadn't attracted his notice before. It appeared to be leaking. Really leaking. Red stuff.

Gingerly, he pulled over and tugged at the top of the big brown paper bag. To his horror, it peeled off, whipping up to reveal a nearly familiar face. The noise he made might have been another fire siren, then he realized that it was not, in fact, the head of the Tellarite envoy, but of a regular Earth pig. “Beg pardon,” he said to the pig, then began to laugh until he had to lean over the steering wheel. “Well. Let's see here...Billy has a newspaper behind the seat under his other boots. I take it that's nothing precious. It ought to do to soak up after a pig head and get it out of sight.”

While he was stopped, he looked over his orders. Nick had apparently been unable to pick up what he had laid away for Maggie. There was a decent sum of money wrapped in the shopping list, with very precise instructions. The efficiency of the directions made it possible for him to have Maggie's new winter coat, perfume and a couple of dresses wrapped and stashed behind the seats in the truck's storage area within an hour, then he went off, feeling cocky, to find the list items that hadn't been set aside earlier.

 

Skon and Chekhov walked by the big red brick church to a slightly smaller and plainer white one topped with a golden, onion-shaped dome. A dozen older women, all in dark dresses with dark patterned headscarves, were trudging through the snow with bags and boxes. Chekhov raced ahead to offer help; Skon drifted up shyly behind him and unloaded one lady's car. “Good boys,” one of the old ladies said. She seemed like an old oak herself, carved and nearly crushed to the ground with the weight of years but strong enough for any snow that fell. She eyed Skon up, squinting badly on one side. “Relatives of Nick's. Why he is not here?”

“He is at work,” Skon ventured.

“Work, work, it's all he does, work! Somebody in the next town needs, he goes, forget home, no good, no good. I tell him Maggie, the kids, okay, the church, okay, not so much running! Mike God rest his soul, work hard, too hard. Nick he tries to do all for both, ya?”

“He...is doing all of Mike's volunteer work, and his own?”

“Ya! Fire department, church, mine, lots overtime there, diner, no sleep. Liquor license, they sold, not bar now, beer with a meal, so, better, no fights at night, place close after dinner.” She stared at him again and said, in what must have been Serbian, “You're not even from this planet, v'tosh.”

Shock would have been out of place. He had known, but still. “No, t'sai.”

“Baba,” she corrected him. “To all here, Baba. Carry that into the parish hall.” She stuffed yet another big cardboard box onto the top of the pile in his arms.

Plain on the outside, plain in the entry, the church's small side chapel had a pan of sand and a small forest of thin candles burning. The door beside the chapel led downstairs tall as he was, he was hard put to see where he was going, so he followed Baba and Chekhov until he felt a solid floor under his feet, guessing he had found the last step.

One of the women flipped on the lights. The basement was a white box, from its tile to its walls and ceiling. At the moment, it was seriously plain. The long tables were draped in white paper. One of the women took the top carton from his stack and unboxed a dozen fake pine centerpieces. The first carton Chekhov held turned out to be a large nativity scene. There was a bag of crepe paper streamers as soon as Skon understood their purpose, he set down the rest of his burden and stretched to tape the paper to the ceiling in reasonably artistic twists and curves. “Without even a ladder,” one of the women giggled. Chekhov's own amusement was properly concealed, but Skon could sense it. “Basketball?”

“Whenever I get a chance.” Exercise was always encouraged. Picking activities one enjoyed was only logical, or so he had told Rana for all the years she had tried to feign being emotionless. The Terran sport closely resembled Vulcan punchball, except the goal was sidewise and he could shoot the ball rather than having to punch it in midair. These days, Rana liked watching him run and jump, most of all on Earth, where the lower gravity made it easier to dunk the ball. The woman was about to ask; he made the mental translation. “Six foot eight.”

That started another fit of mass giggling from the bunch of eighty-year-old teenage girls, and they started telling the friendly strangers their life stories. They were all widows, most of them because of black lung or coal mine accidents. Advent was, for them, yet another fast in a year full of them; when they talked about life in the old country, he wondered what more they could have gone without. Kupus, their diet, mostly kupus, the same word, and nearly the same plant, on both worlds. Potatoes, a little garlic, and whatever else came to hand had grown them thick and sturdy, and if eggs were all they had to give up for fast days, then eggs they gave up. Some of them had good husbands who respected them; a couple hadn't, and the stories they told about that made him cringe. “Ha,” Baba snorted, “we here, they not.”

The residual rage he had left over from the _Narada's_ raid made more sense to him. Hadn't these women been uprooted themselves by insanity? Most had lost siblings or parents, one had lost a young husband when her daughter was only a baby and been forced into a bad marriage until the mine solved that problem for her. Years later, here they all were before him, laughing in a church basement when Vulcans, at least pre-va'Pak, might still be denying anything had been wrong. He thought about the tasks his family were completing at the moment—watching Rana be polite to that diner full of humans would have been worth an admission charge—and permitted himself a small smile. _Ha. We here, he not_.

 

The assortment of festive foods required for a small town diner might have been daunting had Sarek not been so familiar with his grandfather. Every S'Harien family occasion had started with Nick in the kitchen of the farmhouse, wherever it had been towed most recently, and a small army bringing him fresh fruit and vegetables off the stacks or bean curd from the loft. It struck him that the house was once again intact and in residence on the family reserve on New Vulcan, and the soil was so fertile and nontoxic that the stack trailers might not be needed except for tradition.

He wondered about the state of food production on Earth in 1966. The supermarket seemed to have enough of everything, though some shoppers were complaining about missing items like oysters and eggnog they had waited until the last minute to get. He was not certain why so little seemed to be actual food and so much some prefabricated product. Such was even more true at the restaurant supply, where alleged edibles came in cases of appallingly precise portions worthy of the Kohlinahri, and probably almost as tasty as their ration bars. Spaghetti was harmless; he knew and understood noodles and thought the potato chips might be what he was used to. He supposed the “patties, beef, 4 oz.” had been associated with a dead cow at some point, but resolved to meditate upon whether they were now impermissible. They looked less like meat and more like pieces of a doormat after someone had walked across in golf spikes. “Fish sticks” sounded even less salubrious.

The myriad questions of the moment began to intrude as he waited for the supply house clerk to find the 1967 swizzle sticks and the plastic sword picks for fastening sandwiches together. Amanda's return had been glorious, more than he could have asked for, more than he had ever anticipated, and in no sense had he ever expected James to be brought from the past. Any ingratitude on his part was a measure of immaturity, and yet—he thought of Spock at that age, already disassembling any computer he could get his hands on. James could be relied on not to bother anything in a room, even if there were a toolkit lying at hand. He didn't look Vulcan. He looked like Sarek, absolutely, hair and eyes and build, but he did not look Vulcan with his round ears and Earth-curved brows, nor did he act Vulcan. For that matter, none of the Children of Hope seemed to, not even those with impeccable v'tosh lineage and not a bit of contaminant DNA.

The three thousand, eight hundred and forty-one conceived by survivors after va'Pak and before the return of the people, plus the nine hundred and fourteen retrieved from the past and the ten thousand, seven hundred and ninety-two off-world hosted by volunteers or k'turr, all seemed to share a soul so resilient that they were unafraid of nearly any situation. He was watching the evolution of a race that had never existed, Vulcan as it might have been. He had believed he knew something about children after bringing up Spock, having Sybok dropped on him and finding out that Ruven was genetically his son and not his uncle. He knew where the mistakes had lain with them, what the proper course should have been, what he could change to ensure an optimum result this time—and then James was nothing like any of them. He was neither mad but effective like Sybok, nor fiery but brilliant like Spock, nor a perfectly honed and balanced beautiful deadly weapon like Ruven. He was simply, often irritatingly, James the Inquisitive, and he had not come with an owner's manual.

Once she got over the initial shock—no, multiple shocks, there were many at the same time—Amanda had laughed at him, not unkindly. “Oh, honey! They're not all alike. Vulcan education wanted to think all children were the same, but they aren't, they really aren't, and no one knows how to handle every child on every occasion. You're better than you were, you know. So am I. This one is a much easier child, maybe from so much early exposure to so many different people. He wasn't a fussy baby, he isn't a destructive toddler and he doesn't have those bursts of rage we've dealt with as his mind blossoms...even if he is a pre-birth empath, gee, who can we blame for that? Also, if somebody does attempt to bully this one about being a hybrid, he not only has all the others whose families can't say anything, but also his Aunt Arre and cousin Ta'an, who would gladly knock somebody six ways from Sunday for offending their people.”

They would, no doubt in a violent way as children were...but had there not been some place for that before, when he had never allowed Ruven, three years older and already strong, to intervene in the vicious children's games? He carried the restaurant supplies to the truck and set them in the bed as the gray sky lowered and the streetlights came on. On the other side of the parking lot, a small store was busy, its colored lights flicking on for the evening as a steady parade of shoppers fanned the doors. His fingers found the unfamiliar wallet in his pocket with its small burden of bills.

The small urge in his mind met with a stern _Why_? From his careful discipline, followed by the image of his father and grandfathers: _Why_ _not_?

He joined the crowd in the warmth and light.


	3. How The Grinch Didn't Steal Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All they have to do is get all of the Christmas parties taken care of before the snowstorm hits. What could be so bad about that?

Nick opened the door cautiously. The yellow house's shades were drawn to keep Maggie from noticing the activity inside. The bare rooms had their first coat of paint, with the second fast catching up thanks to the two industrious spray-gun painters who divided the territory, Chekhov taking the lower walls and Skon the top. They finished the last wall as he watched, briefly speechless. “I know I've seen this before, but that is still admirable work.”

Skon nodded politely and picked off a piece of masking tape. “This is merely the touch-up. It was done last night. We painted the bedrooms first so they would dry by the time we needed them. Rana was very tired, and painting was much easier without the little one underfoot helping.”

 _Yeah, sure, she was tired_ , he thought. _Rana didn't get_ _ **that**_ _from a stranger, either_. “Arre was good as gold from what I hear. She sacked out with ours and that was all we heard till morning. Maggie can't stop talking about her.” He rubbed his own back and propped a foot up on a paint can. “He did have fun in the mine. I dealt with the K of C pig, put on the fire department's for lunch tomorrow and set up the banquet room for the Lions' Club come morning so there's no big rush today, then we both actually got a full night's sleep. What's left to do over here?”

“Nearly nothing, but I see why you experienced difficulty. Many of the tasks required at least two people. Sarek and I diagnosed and adjusted the furnace, Kirk and Chekhov finished the plumbing—the upstairs bathroom was leaking, and son and I weren't sure how to deal with water, but he was and he knew where to get the fitting we needed. Chekhov found and corrected the problem with your communication line. Also, your television reception is much improved with the new antenna this one went up on the roof to place.”

“It was nothing, sir,” Chekhov dismissed the praise. “You now get all of the Pittsburgh channels and also Johnstown. In fact, we watched _Galaxy Quest_ while we were painting.”

Those two sweet, earnest souls were irresistible. “Good thing it was a rerun. Missing that used to be the crummiest part of afternoon shift or working late at the diner. Let's clean up the sprayers and go on over to find this hard-working crew some breakfast. The rest of the gang is up and around too.” He herded them across the alley and through the back yard to the gate by the back of the diner, where his future self had stepped out for a momentary break. The small, confused beagle out on his own morning rounds came up to Nick for petting despite his uncertainty. That one put a hand down, and his future self, bittersweet, felt what had to be the long-gone familiar softness of his dog's ears. “Hey, Chum. Want a fried egg this morning? Yes? We can handle that.”

Bill stepped over the fence, undisturbed by the duplicates. “I gave him the pig ears late last night. Mrs. Dragic took the head to clean up and cook, and I hosed off the floor mats. Man, I'd have loved to see Jim's face. I never thought about the paper bag not being the best for long-term storage. The early pit crew didn't mention if the lamb had the same problem.”

“It did,” one of the men at the barbecue pit said. “What they had left was a good-sized old ram. It'll have to slow-cook and get tender. We had to, uh...do like yesterday.”

“Truck?” The men nodded. “I don't want to leave it where the dogs will get hold, and I don't think anybody likes mutton headcheese. We'll toss it next trip up the road where there's woods. Mrs. Dragic wants us to get rid of the pig skull anyway.”

The club's breakfast might have started at eight, but by seven-thirty the drizzle of lost travelers had turned into a stream as steady as the light persistent snow. Other-Nick was already back at the griddle with a cardboard crate of eggs and a pitcher of pancake batter. “So, were there any problems with the shift last night?”

“Not at all.” They fell into his own rhythm, handing over plates and flipping pancakes as if he had four hands. The waffle iron was ready and he shoveled up four fresh ones while his younger self slid eggs onto the platter. “We finished that room, I trammed over to start the next cut and Herb stopped us twenty minutes early because there was some cable to move before next shift. We even kept Billy awake the whole time. The house is done except the furniture.”

He had estimated no less than another week of work were it only his own. “Seriously.”

“Seriously. You made some decent kids and grandchildren. Point them at work and you don't have to tell them twice. The little Russian guy found out what was wrong with your phone line and put up the antenna that's been waiting since September.”

“He got up on the roof with it snowing? He might be used to it, but still.” Nick shook his head and set another plate of eggs and toast up on the counter for Maggie. “I meant to get furniture hints from her, because she's not going to want to use most of this that's falling apart. The kitchen was easy because she was looking at new stuff for upstairs. Our bedroom, that's another thing. I did get the kids new beds because those old bunk beds in the girls' room over here are awful.”

Other-Nick gave him a small mysterious smile. “Trust you?”

“You got ideas, use them. You know where the cash stash is over there.”

“Upstairs in the bathroom reading rack there's a Kaufman's ad from last week's _Post-Gazette_ where she was looking at furniture. The same thing will be cheaper today at Discount World because they're going out of business again, but you know that part.”

“Get it while we have help carrying in? Sarek will be along, then he's going to go fetch the K of C keg and the door prizes. Maggie will be too busy to notice.”

More waffles were ready; he got those too, glanced up at the order slips and parceled them out. Rana scooped up two of the plates and whirled off with them as if she were enjoying herself. “You are not going to tell me more, and you're hiding a lot.”

“Hey, it's not easy to shield me from me. You got better at it over the years.”

He handed Maggie a tray with four more orders and started cooking for his own people. No one else would hear, so he muttered to his future self “Something bad happened. Very big, bad and recent. It isn't all fixed but you are greatly relieved and believe it can be.”

Future self bowed his head over the hash browns he was stirring on the no-meat grill. “A long time from now, when everyone around you is falling apart and you can't imagine going on, because it really is that bad, remember it isn't hopeless. It's terrible, it hurts, it changes so much, it will seem like the end of the world, but it isn't. It's temporary. There's a long time before it happens, you'll do a lot between now and then, and it really will be all right if you can hang on for a year or two.”

“Rana has almost no shields left of her own. I sensed the shadow of it. On an earlier visit, she said she had attempted Kolinahr three times as a teenager and been sent away. Why, when she has anything but the requisite personality?”

“Long story, but she wanted to be the most Vulcan ever. Before the _thing_ , she would not have admitted to emotions regardless of the cause. The bad thing that happened accounts for her ragged shields. It's permanent. Now, having been through that, she...at times I think she's growing a soul.”

“Sarek also attempted Kolinahr and failed?”

“The first three were juvie Kohlinahr camp, if you get my drift. Kid couldn't stay out of trouble. The fourth, he meant well, but it wasn't ever going to work.”

“I see he is now a healer as well as a musician. His father is more artistic than musical. Rana seems to have made a good choice of bondmate.”

Rana reached up for two of the big platters. “I believe so. Your approval means much.”

“He deserves it, kid.” Once she had left, his other said “Believe me. He's her only, and she chose very well.”

“S'chnT'gai, at that, right? Talk about marrying up. They both work with their hands?”

“That you can know. Her grandmother's true family took her in. She's a silversmith, you know how the S'Hariens are. He does the most beautiful calligraphy that she uses in her inlays, especially as decorative pieces on instruments. They're as pleasing as her ancestors' museum pieces.--That reminds me, Skon is very fond of strawberry jam if he ever stops running by with toast and waffles for everybody else out there. That's how hard he always works.” Maggie was approaching, so he stopped. “Sunshine, this is a lot of fun when I'm not doing it every day.”

She took a moment to roll her eyes at both of them. “Riiiiight. The first pig roast went great, but the 'lamb'...Herb says that ram went after him day before yesterday and had to go, so he's a donation.”

“That is why we put the carcass on the spit early, with the fire department pig in the pit. There should be time enough to get everything done.  I hope everyone who eats meat shows up tonight. There's enough attitudinal mutton for the whole town.”

She looked as tired and dubious as she had since she had talked to her brother at the beginning of the week. “If it gets done.”

“Oh, it'll get done.” There were several ways of accomplishing that and his older self had thought of several more, which they exchanged silently without quite snickering. Maggie thumped hers lightly on the head and took the platters to the club's tables.

“Is there more coffee?” Chekhov asked, holding up an empty carafe. He had apparently taken on the job of keeping everyone's cup full.

Future Nick showed him. “Right here, but it needs refilled. Take one pack of this and a filter...”

 

Meditation was not, as some outworlders supposed, a luxury. Sarek had found the best possible place, not only dim with candlelight and the ghost of remembered incense, but live with those he sought in time of trouble and blessed with cushions to kneel on. When he drifted back to the surface, greatly relieved, a few people were drifting in from the cold for a morning service. “Not staying?” asked one of the men—he had to be a miner, just off night shift, soap and clean skin not quite washing away the deeper, sharper scent of fresh coal. “You're welcome to.”

“I would, but today will be very busy at the diner and my relatives will need the help.”

“Ah. Well, Merry Christmas, then, Mikey, and the same to Gloria and all.”

“I'll pass it along. Merry Christmas--” the unshielded mind yielded a name, “George.”

Mikey? The fresh balance of meditation had kept him from jumping out of his skin. He stepped out into the light snow, nodding politely; years as an ambassador had taught him to adapt fast and watch for all the little gestures. _Everywhere but at home,_ he thought. _Why did you not comprehend that you needed to treat them with the same regard as you would some visitor?_ The unlikely second chances he had been dealt demanded attention, a message beginning to form. His impulse of the night before had not been a mistake; it had been a first effort, to be refined and improved over time.

 _I need to speak with Mother, if not now, when we return to our time_. It was a sudden, clear thought that would not be denied. At one time, she might have thought the request impertinent; now he was reasonably certain she would greet it with a raised eyebrow, go to her newly retrieved toolkit and get to work. Father's cooperation was nearly a given.

Father. Skon had been dead in the distorted time before the Guardians' adjustments. The restored timeline should have carried away the sorrow, but its ghost in the back of his memory was like the candle soot in the church, a mist of forgotten light. More so, a reminder. The request would please him, or even be a gift in itself. The memory that came to mind was not the worst night or the best; it was a long-ago night on Andor when he was his father's aide. The damp chill had made his asthma worse. Skon had known, and he had come to sit with Sarek until his inhaler worked. Neither spoke, and Skon never touched him; he simply sat by the window in his bathrobe and read something on his padd until the wheezing eased, then got up with a soft “Sleep well, sa'fu.” That was a gift. If he could be the father his father was...or his grandfathers, for that.

Still deep in thought, he made his way to the back of the diner where the kitchen continued in organized chaos. Someone was working on every sanitary food preparation surface, so he took up a spot at the sink where he could load the dishwasher. _Dishes in water! What a thought. The amount of water on this planet is stunning. James will never know how dry Vulcan was_. Nick barely looked over. “Only another half-hour of this and the orders are slowing down now. Len has most of the ham sandwiches ready for the Scouts, their sodas are in the cooler, they use paper plates. Aw, shit!”

Sarek recalled that expression of dismay was common on Earth at the time and did not necessarily presage the revelation of dire circumstances. “Difficulty?”

“I forgot something important. Like, people would be seriously disappointed. It's another thing my father-in-law always did that got put aside in the rush.” Nick stepped away from the grill and scanned the crowd in the main room. “Jim! C'mere a minute!” Captain Kirk hustled over from a table. “Upstairs next door, on the top closet shelf in our room, there's a green box and a blue box, each half a meter square and two decimeters high. There is an elf costume in the green and a Santa Claus suit in the blue. How fast can you put that on and make an appearance here, then again for the Boy Scouts? Most of them don't believe, but there are a lot of younger brothers and sisters who do, so.”

“Uh,” Kirk gulped. He looked at Sarek, who shook his head slowly. “Come on, look at you. I'm kind of shrimpy to be--”

“Noooo,” Sarek said with his best dignified voice. “I do _not_ ho-ho-ho.”

“They'd know my voice.” Both Nicks began to fight laughter in an obvious way. “It won't fit Chekhov. It wouldn't fit Skon and he'd actually do it. The elf costume would fit Kirk...”

Five minutes later, as he donned the musty fake beard and Kirk fetched him a pillow, he thought of worse ceremonial attire he had been required to don in the course of his ambassadorial duties. The Betazoid wedding he had attended had been the most awkward; normally, the bridal couple were naked during the ceremony, but the families had been ultra-orthodox and wanted the attendants and musicians nude as well. His harp made a remarkably effective privacy covering. This (he told himself, surveying the pillow-plumped jacket) was just the opposite, a guarantee of anonymity. All he had to do was think of the stereotypical dialogue as lyrics, sing with limited range and try to avoid contact with overzealous small children. One of the Nicks had to remind them it was too bad Kirk didn't have pointy ears when he was the elf. The other handed Kirk a basket with little bags of candy and small toys. “Keep Santa supplied. It's the same drill for the Boy Scouts, the little ones all get a treat.”

“I cannot imagine a six-year-old Vulcan child--”

“They're not Vulcans,” present-Nick interrupted, “and _think_. The Rain Festival.”

True enough. There was no mythological or religious figure involved, but a child who came home from the Rain Festival without a parcel of sweets tossed from the high priestess' pedestal would have considered himself deprived for the year. Symbolically distributing the desert's bounty was the only time the high priestess was permitted a public moment of frivolity. Once, when he was small, he could have sworn he had seen T'Lar smile. Why had it meant so much that the adults were having a good time?

Hope, he decided. Adults were serious to the point of grimness, there and here. An unwary child never exposed to an adult taking a moment's recreation might come to believe there were no benefits to adulthood. That could not be permitted. He strolled out into the room. “Merry Christmas!”

 

In the break between the Lions' Club and the Boy Scouts, Kirk helped clear the tables while the Nicks put the last load in the big commercial dishwasher. Rana carried Arre around to help her wipe things down, and Nick's children all seemed to know what to do already.

Skon took down the Lions' logos and put up the Scouts' blue and gold streamers, then went to finish off the biscuits on the back counter. He spied the packets of strawberry jam, made use of several and set to. Rana glided over to him, looking up with mock disapproval. There was a fleck of jam on his cheek; she flicked it off, then licked her finger in a suggestive way when the kids weren't looking. He raised an eyebrow. She went on, as if nothing were unusual: “I do not believe what I just saw our middle child do.”

“Indeed. Had it been one of the others, it would hardly have been surprising.”

The toddler tugged at Sarek's sleeve expectantly. He handed his small sister one of the bags. She bowed. “Khvala.”

“Impressive pronunciation for having been here less than a day,” Sarek said. Arre offered him one of the sweets, which he accepted. “I see. These are indeed quite good.”

Kirk wanted to mention the obvious, but didn't. What harm was one small chocolate apt to do? It took a lot more than that to get Spock pleasantly loaded, and the lack of hangover always left Kirk jealous. Arre removed a toy car from the packet, gave it a speculative look, ran it along the counter and looked up at her brother. “Zoom?” He nodded gravely.

“Here, you two.” Past-Nick had thrown on a jacket and collared Chekhov. “We are going to go get the remaining... _supplies_ for that project you managed earlier. Billy will be in before the Scouts show up. Maybe he'll have the, uh, thing that should be in on the train. Other-me, you can call Bob the cop's in-law and check the weather, can't you?”

“I can as soon as this--” he poured potato chips into a bowl, “is done, but I am not the one who needs the information, capice?” Past-Nick smacked his forehead and made a go-on gesture. “To summarize: snow here will continue, but the local roads will still be marginally passable. The road east of the ridge will close, and as one proceeds east—or fails to proceed—snow depths will increase into the night. We'll have a decimeter on Christmas morning, give or take the usual wind scour or drifts. The mutton is roasting appropriately and will be done by night. Both it and most of the caretakers are very well basted. However, Len has remained remarkably sober for a man who enjoys liquor.”

Kirk smiled. “He's on the job. Barbecue is a very serious matter to a Georgia boy.”

Billy rushed in, looking frazzled, to explain that weather had held up the train that might have the dollhouse on it. “Maybe on the six o'clock. There's a small army of people pulling into the parking lot and I don't know why.”

The fire in Butler had rekindled, causing a lot of wrong turns where the detour started. The plummeting temperature drove the majority of the travelers into the diner for hot drinks and, of course, directions. He had heard Maggie give them so many times that he began to recite them himself while he handed out coffee, and after having seen her run the cash register, he caught onto that, too. The cash was a simple decimal system; he had used some of the bills on the trip into the larger towns without incident and it was easy to count the change. At some point, a gentle drawl joined his voice at the counter. “Yes, ma'am, you go right up the street here and just keep right on going until you hit a little place called West Sunbury, then you turn right at the stop sign and go on down that hill. Just be real careful because the state trucks might not have been out yet.”

“Now you're giving directions,” he muttered.

“Might as well. I've heard them two dozen times.”

He flipped his elf hat. “Merry Christmas to you, too. These must be the Scouts.”

Dozens of half-grown boys in khaki uniforms led smaller ones in blue and gold into the diner's side room. Four of them, presumably the patrol leaders, came to the counter where Maggie was setting out a platter. “Ma'am, may we help with that?”

“Of course. Here are the ham sandwiches and here are the ones with just cheese.” She handed over the rest of their food, the platters of pickles and bowls of chips, and the boys distributed them with quiet efficiency. There were a few small packs of unopened chips and wrapped sandwiches on a blue platter. “For the Jewish kids who keep kosher,” Maggie explained. “And the _others_.” One of the older Scouts drifted by with a strangely familiar aura. In contrast with the crisply regimented way he wore his uniform, his straight black hair was longish and brushed over his ears and his eyebrows had an oddly plucked look as if half of them were missing. “Luke, the sodas are right there and here's the ice.” The boy nodded and matter of factly picked up two cases of soda by scooping them up in one arm. Maggie looked at Kirk and quirked up the corner of her mouth. “So.”

“I see. Many?”

“Three families. They heard, they made their way to town, there are always jobs around the mine, they never talk about whether they crashed or ran away. Not all of our tall people with spiky eyebrows are actually Serbo-Croatian. Of course they have families. Good kids, all of them so far.”

The Scouts had their dinner planned and organized, so he turned his attention to putting things away until Santa was due to make his appearance at the end of the party. Maggie and Bones handled most of the lost people, while his Nick manned the grill and the kids occasionally refilled napkin holders or went back upstairs squabbling. He noticed his grandmother had no less fear of barking at her sisters and brother as a child than she would have yelling at Kodos as an adult. Nick and Maggie would occasionally glance up, but did not intervene; evidently they knew how serious the fights were. Rana was more alarmed at first until she realized her own small daughter was holding her own and enjoying it. “I have been concerned about Arre's siblings being so much older,” she admitted as they all sat in the kitchen for a moment.

“I was worried about ours being so close and my John being older, but they follow him around like a litter of puppies,” Maggie chuckled. “They're spending the night with his girlfriend's parents in Donora. I'm pretty sure they're married and are going to break the news to us tomorrow.”

Sarek looked vaguely alarmed. “They didn't ask you first?”

“I'm sure he asked her father,” Nick shrugged. “That's how it's done here.”

Rana made the faintest of well-if-that's-the-human-way faces, then lifted her head. The other Nick's truck had gone by. “I wonder where you're going?”

“Probably dropping something off for Billy,” Nick said. Kirk noticed his fingers crossed behind his back. Skon caught his eye, nodded and slipped out the back door.

Maggie looked out the window as the gray afternoon flurried on. “My father loved Christmas. When my brother and I were little, he would get off work and sit in the living room with his accordion. We'd sing carols and play board games until time for church. Later on, when times went bad, we would do all of that and make paper ornaments and forget the whole town was broke.”

“Oh?”

“You've heard about the Great Depression. It would have been hard to be more depressed than here when the mine owners shut everything down in 1927. I was nine. Two years later the whole country followed. I was eleven when _that_ happened and it was no fun at all. Daddy always said we were lucky to have that beat-up old house—way back that hollow, Doc fixed it up and lives in it now—and a garden so we could eat. I knew where every wild berry bush and apple tree was on these hills. We had a pear tree, and when the mine was first open the superintendent had put in a whole row of black plums. We had a big grape arbor. When he realized the coal jobs weren't coming back soon, Daddy did what he had to do with all that fruit.”

“And did it well,” Nick added with a small grin.

“He kept some of the slivovitz for his friends. The wine he'd sell if he knew the people well enough. The rest, the big boss from Pittsburgh used to send up a car every other week for, shall we say, the corn crop. The cops knew, so the boss made sure there was no official notice taken. He never got arrested and we had food.”

Kirk wanted to laugh, but Bones shot an elbow into his ribs. Spock's still was officially for the ethanol he needed in the lab. If any of it vanished, or turned into a relative's recipe, he was blameless. “Those must have been some bad years, and for him, bringing you up without your mother...”

“Daddy worked twice as hard as anybody to keep from missing Mama. Everybody expected him to get married again, but he never did. He had us, and work, and when that wasn't enough he'd find somebody else to do for.”

“How did he get hurt?”

“The mine over there, Number Two, early in the war. Daddy got mashed up against the rib. Broke his back, at first they thought he'd never walk again, and it took forever for him to get anything out of workman's comp. Both of us were teenagers by then, I was married but he had left and Mikey had just been drafted. The boss who'd bought all that moonshine wanted to help me, thought he had...the underboss wasn't nearly as nice a man, you know?” She looked over at her Santa Claus, who was impassive as ever but radiating regret. “Oh, honey, don't feel bad. Look how it all turned out.”

Arre gazed up at her brother. “Gwinch. No steal Christmas. All good now.”

He looked down with all the severity he could muster toward her. “'Grinch', Arre?”

“Big. Green. Grumpy. Here.” She handed him yet another piece of candy.

The dark, serene Scout wafted up. “The little ones are ready for Santa.”

Kirk had refilled the basket of treats. Sarek made to stand up and registered mild alarm when his feet did not immediately locate the floor. “Okay, sa'mi?”

“Undamaged,” he said. “Actually, as Amanda says, fiiiiine.” He strode over to the meeting room. “Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!”

 

“If that's not exactly where she wants it, it'll be close enough.” Nick set down his end of the couch while Skon pulled the plastic wrap from the cushions before the light coating of snow melted. “And done. How did I ever intend to do even half of this by myself?”

Skon fluffed a throw pillow, wondering the extent of his father-in-law's current knowledge. “I have no idea whether a timeline iteration failed or whether you brought the knowledge forward. Your odds of completing these tasks alone were less than seventeen percent.”

“At best. How did Mike manage, all those years?”

“Perhaps he didn't, sir.” Chekhov sat on the arm of the couch. “While I was over at the church last night, the ladies were telling me how he got the whole town organized. Was not him doing all the work, was him getting everybody to see work that needed done.” He got up and put the extra oak branch he held on top of the new television. “The tree was generous with two, one for apartment, one for here. By the way, what were ze patents for?”

“The larger one was those flat soft plastic packets one can drink from. The smaller was a buckle we used on the ship's safety harnesses. I didn't expect the pay to come as quickly as it did. Maggie wanted to use the liquor license money to buy the house, so we did, but she doesn't expect it to be done.” Nick sat back on the couch and surveyed the TV. “Look how little snow there is on the image. The other television is nearly done working. This one is color.”

“And heavy,” Skon commented. “Perhaps more substantial?”

“You'd think so, but the technology is still in its youth. Well. I see the Scouts have had their party, the lost people trade is picking up and Jim and Sarek can get those costumes off and resume being as normal as is possible.” He ticked items off on his fingers. “The train at six o'clock should bring the dollhouse and Father. Billy has restrung the lights on the Christmas tree in front of the church and is watching the mutton. The lights upstairs at our apartment have been replaced and someone fixed the light disc for the aluminum tree. I hesitate to mention it, but it appears that for the moment, things are under control and we can all rest for a bit.”

Skon placed the framed photographs on top of the television. Some were obvious pictures of the children. The big, burly, smiling gray-haired man had all of them on his lap. “This is Maggie's father?”

“That is Mike, taken last Christmas.” Nick looked at the picture fondly. “He knew. I did not have to explain anything to him. When I found out why, it caused me to question much of what I believed, or rather, disbelieved. In some way, we were led directly to help in a town that never seemed to question our origins or why we looked the way we did.”

Yes, and there had been good reasons for that. “He was an extraordinary man, was he not?”

“He was. I still grieve his loss, but he taught me a great deal about that, too.” Nick's fondness showed, though Skon refrained from comment on it. “He told me the evening Maggie introduced us that I should ask him anything I wanted to know. He promised he wouldn't laugh. 'All greenhorns once, ya? Nobody all stuff knows.' I took him at his word and he taught me everything from how to drive a stick shift to why it's a bad idea to smoke cigarettes even if most of the men in town do. Neither of us spoke good English, so it's a good thing Syrannite and Serbian are that close. My Terran language training was in Mandarin Chinese and a little Hindi. Mike told me to tell people I learned in the Navy, because most won't ask beyond that. Almost everyone my apparent age served in World War II. The women here were not ordinarily warriors, but the men were. Interesting.”

“Sexual dimorphism is quite pronounced among Humans, compared to v'tosh,” Skon agreed. “Even among Betazoids, genetically nearly indistinguishable but for three to four genes, the females are much smaller and lighter in the upper body.” Rana's fragility had haunted him every time she went off on some diplomatic mission; they both knew she lacked some of the strength of an ordinary Vulcan woman. At the time, they had blamed it on her hard birth and the old assassination attempt. Now he knew the better reason, and why she had lived at all: Human genes gave her tolerance for nearly every poison that had been thrown at her by the Vulcan separatist movement. He had never been with a v'tosh who had all of her physical strength, and he rather enjoyed knowing how glad Rana was that he could help her do difficult tasks. “But Maggie did some unusually heavy work?”

“Just so. Her mate had enlisted in the service before the war to find work at all, then he found another mate near his army camp. Maggie's father had been injured and her job was insufficient and unsuited to her. Once the war began in earnest, Mike took care of the boy while she found much better and better-paying work on the railroad, maintaining locomotives. It was difficult work made available to her only because of the shortage of male labor, but she is strong and performed admirably.” Yes her grandmother's genes, doubtless. “She made the most of the opportunity and was able to avoid going back to the job she disliked, and eventually, with the money she had saved in war bonds, to get a down payment on the Pine Tree when the owner wanted to sell.”

“Her father must have been proud of her.”

“Mike was, but he was also frustrated at his inability to do heavy work. He was pulled back into the mine for some lighter duties barely possible for him with some unskilled help, but once the war ended he was discharged as disabled once again. For the rest of his life, he worked for the church and the fire department and anyone else who found work for a man who couldn't breathe well and had only partial use of his legs. He taught me...” Nick paused, “not to give up, and not to stop.”

“A valuable lesson.” How to explain, without revealing va'Pak? “The event in our lives demanded exactly that, and you performed admirably, perhaps by his example.”

Nick cranked the television's control dial, flicking through perhaps ten channels. He found one he liked and sat down, stretching his legs out. “Did I.”

How could he even explain all of it? Time enough, he knew. “Indeed.”

“I hope I did better than this. There is a great misplaced faith in this town that whatever breaks, Nicky will fix it. This time Nicky damn near made a mess he couldn't come close to fixing.”

“You did fix it, by enlisting help. That is an acceptable outcome by any measure.”

Nick sat back again and turned to look at him. “I have the impression I didn't pick you out for my daughter. I'll say what Mike did—if I had, I couldn't have done any better.”

“Believe me, I got the best of the bargain--” A faint whine caught his attention a fraction of a second before Nick reacted. “What is--”

“Siren spooling up,” Nick said, grabbing his boots. “We didn't need that.” The siren began to blast in earnest. Nick looked back when he was halfway out the door. “You trained as a medic for Humans?”

“I took your class...ah, the one you haven't taught on Vulcan yet.”

That didn't faze Nick. “Good. Come with us.”


	4. Close Only Counts In Horseshoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone gathers in town, even those who didn't intend to spend the holidays there.

Billy was waiting by the truck. “Four-car pileup up the hill by Woody's gas station. Everything that way is blocked, there's still a mess down in Butler and the hill's icy so the salt truck is going out in front of us. Don't know how many hurt yet.”

Nick slid onto the fire truck's bench seat and left room for Skon. One of the other firemen would bring the ambulance once the bigger, heavier truck found its way up the slick road. “Three inches already, you think, where it isn't packed down?” Further precision was impossible and would have annoyed Billy. For that matter, it had begun to annoy Nick himself. _As Mike used to say, sometimes close enough is good enough, ya_.

“Best I can guess. It's hard to tell with the wind blowing like this.” Billy side-eyed him. “You gonna be warm enough in that turnout coat?”

“Got my work jacket on under it.” The gas station sat just past the intersection of Carbon Creek Road and the top of the hill past town. The wreck was obvious, a car coming out of the gas station t-boning one that had slid through the stop sign, with two more behind it equally unable to stop on the beginning of the downgrade. They were more stuck than badly damaged. “Whoa, Bill, careful.”

` “You're telling me, and we're not even getting the worst of this storm. State patrol says the roads east of here are useless.” He stopped the truck, grabbed the biggest first-aid kit and skated up to the cars. Nick brought the smaller one and handed Skon the oxygen bottle in case; they might not need it, but it was easier to bring it than to try to move fast on the ice.

The driver of the car that had been broadsided was a co-worker at the mine. Boots was holding his ribs. Everyone else seemed to have escaped injury because of the slow speed of the collision. It might not have been strict procedure for 1966 Earth, but Nick put a hand on the driver's shoulder up near his bare neck for a quick read. There was no serious internal damage beyond light bruises, though the man's lungs were already in a state of mild and chronic disrepair and his heart was beginning to show some stress from it. This afternoon would not kill him. “Nah, don't need no hospital, Bun,” he said. “They get me down there, I gotta tell the old lady I was drinking.”

Which was a bad idea behind the wheel, albeit not illegal at the level Boots had taken in. “You don't seem badly hurt. In case it gets worse, that doctor visiting with us might be able to do you some good till Doc Cochrane gets back.”

“He'd likely do me more good than Doc. Good man if he'd quit looking for UFOs and pay a little more attention to what's down here, we'd all be better off.-- _Billy look out_!”

Billy had been talking to one of the other drivers, standing in the middle of the road as a fresh and blinding snow squall hit. Skon scruffed him and tossed him over the hood of the wrecked car while a fuel oil tanker appeared out of the cloud, sliding sideways in slow motion. The contact was almost gentle, but inexorable. Only a basketball jump put Skon on the hood instead of under the front wheels as the tanker pushed the whole mass of wreckage through the gas station lot and Billy flew down the road on his backside. Knowing Boots couldn't run, Nick grabbed the miner and slid, both of them gasping a steady stream of profanity as all of them scattered to avoid the mess.

Nick's nose picked up the gas fumes even before the faint shimmer in the air gave its warning. It was too late, even in the cold, even with the wind, to prevent what was about to happen, as inevitable as the blowing snow. The sound was so soft at first that it sounded like someone spitting tobacco. Skon was alternately running and skidding with a woman over his shoulder and a child in his other arm. Billy ran in the other direction with Nick to pull the fire truck back with the rest of the drivers and passengers hanging onto it. As they went by, Bob the state patrolman was already on his radio yelling warnings to block approaches to the crossroads. “Is that tanker full?”

“Unfortunately, no.” The cop would understand: a tank completely full of fuel oil would have given them a fighting chance. With the liquid pressure off and the tank likely full of air, and therefore fumes, all they could do was get back as far as they could and hurl foam at the truck in hope that the growing orange shimmer wouldn't do what it almost certainly would.

Instead, the trucker calmly put his truck in reverse and backed through the hissing pumps, around the wrecked cars and down the cross street. Once it stopped, he shut it off, walked back toward the station, judged his angle, found a stretch of snow without much foam on it, and sprinted for the building. The proprietor had run out the front door when he saw the wreck, so the door was unlocked. Soren dodged in, slapped something on the wall and galloped back out. “That warmed me up a bit. Officer, I regret losing control of my truck.”

Bob the cop grabbed his chest and gasped a few mild profanities. “I forgot, you know where the shutoffs are for all these places. Holy cow. Okay...nobody's much hurt, the car damage is minor if they don't catch fire, the pumps ain't gonna be back anytime soon but I can't let people out on these roads anyway...hoo. That's enough wrecks for me. I'm gonna beg the boss to shut everything down. Ah jeez, Soren, I didn't realize that was you. You couldn't even see the road. I can't write you a ticket for failure to stop in assured clear distance when nothing was clear and you were barely moving. This kind of slop is no one's fault.” Another fire truck from the main road's other direction slid to a stop. Its chief must have grasped the situation and also began to lay foam as fast as possible. “Sure you're okay, Soren? You don't look so good.”

He wasn't. Nick knew why; the truck driver's body temperature was so low that he was forcing down shivers with all that was left of his discipline. Soren Golich had appeared in town six months after he had come, sent by T'Mir. He recalled the night Soren had come to the door, hesitant, to explain himself. “If you wish to ignore me officially, I will understand. I have been declared k'turr stonn, for marrying Laila in a moment of, er, necessity...” His beautiful Betazoid wife, herself a space orphan, had not known she needed permission to take care of the embassy's young mechanic who found himself in a delicate situation. The Vulcan ambassador to Betazed had been so outraged that she had not stopped at sending Soren home, nor at telling him to live outside the family compound; she had declared him not only vrekampt or vrekasht, but k'turr stonn, erased from all official records. Laila had no family to take him in even had he still owned a passport. T'Mir had heard and had taken enough pity to stow them away on a survey shuttle, which dropped them off a hundred years earlier in a place she knew would accept them. The couple and their boys (Charlie was eight and Chip was new) seemed content in Carbon Creek and Soren no longer tried to hide how fond he was of his wife, a cheerful empath who cast off a cloud of joy wherever she went. “Soren, were you out in the weather a lot this afternoon?”

“All day. So many people were afraid they would be out of oil. This was to be my last stop. Unfortunately, I didn't manage the stop part.”

“You know you're like me, the old malaria gets to you when you get too cold. You look like you're going to pass out. Sit in your truck or Bob's car or the fire truck.You need to get warm.” They and Doc Cochrane had long ago agreed to tell people a story about malaria picked up in the Navy. “Experimental malaria cures” explained the blood color. Since atabrine turned everyone yellow, according to Billy, greenish wasn't that far-fetched. Soren was darned near blue at the moment.

“One more mile,” Soren sighed. “That is the first horrible mistake I have made thus far.”

“Eh, it could have been a whole lot worse. Now listen to Nick and get warm.” Billy shoved him toward the fire truck. “No cigarettes, anybody!”

Nick tended the gauges and watched the shimmering air dissipate. No more cars came to the wreckage; twilight was beginning to edge across the land. “Nobody's allowed up from Carbon Creek or down toward Butler,” Bob the cop confirmed. “I hate to do that, but it really isn't safe even for the people who got stuck in the detour. Best we can do is pack them out on the six o'clock trains. Is there anyplace in town we can put them up for the night?”

“Boy, wish the old mine clubhouse wasn't in such rough shape, but it's about to fall in. We can find places...” Nick stopped; maybe they couldn't. His own family had slept at the new house, though they let Maggie think they were at Billy's. Billy had a couple of unheated empty rooms. Food wouldn't be a problem, maybe the church basement...the old convent only had two nuns in it, if they were willing to let a couple of families camp out overnight. The clubhouse—he paused to look down the hill, where the building's three-story roof barely showed beyond a line of trees--had been set up long ago by the Carbon Creek Coal Company to put up traveling salesmen and company officials, since there was no nearby hotel. The company had been saying they were going to fix or demolish it since he went to work in 1957. He added “warn people it's unlocked but not all that safe” to his afternoon list.

“Bob, are you all right?” Skon's soft voice called his attention to the cop, who was rubbing his chest. “Your color is not good.”

“Been coughing for a couple days. Got all cramped up yesterday, happening again. It's nothing.”

“If you have any aspirin, you might want to take two.”

“Oh, yeah, got that in the car here.” Bob couldn't open the small tin of aspirin, so Skon did it for him and handed him two tablets, which let him brush against Bob's palm. He flicked his eyes sidewise at Nick and tapped the center of his own chest, where a human heart was. Bob was human, past fifty and heavy, running back and forth in snow.

Nick leaned on the side of the truck, letting his turnout coat hide the scanner in his palm. What he saw convinced him to get into his own pocket tin, the one he and Doc had worked on for some time. “Want one of these mints, Bob? Aspirin always tears up my gut by itself.”

“Yeah, yeah, maybe.” Bob accepted the “mint” (the brush against Nick's hand revealed his left main descending artery was all but clogged and his addled mind didn't know how close he was) and chewed it gratefully. He sat on the fender of his car, watching the road in case there was traffic to flag, and within a few minutes the pale shimmer of sweat on his face began to dry. “Huh. It went away. That's twice this week. When he gets back I gotta ask Doc for some penicillin or something.”

 _There just happens to be a Human doctor with a twenty-third century medkit down in town. This can't be fixed in 1966, only put off, but with what my future self says?_ “You ought to ask our friend Len. No sense waiting till Monday when he can fix you up this afternoon.”

The only tow truck in town had quite a struggle to get up the hill, so he concentrated his efforts on the worst-stuck vehicles. The cosmetic damage might have been more worrisome had it not been to two coal miners' beat-up work cars, and the station wagon with a significant door ding was drivable and only needed to get into the near end of Carbon Creek at the base of the rise-- “it wasn't your fault at all and we'll tell Jeff for you; we know how he hollers,” Billy added to the lady who had driven it. She and her kids got in the tow truck for the short ride. “He better not start anything with her. I can't stand the way he barks at her for every little thing. Francis, good call all around, and I'm glad you were here. By the way...” the three of them were alone in the cab of the fire truck, “Francis? Or would you rather another name when we're alone?”

“I am Skon,” he said, “but also Francis. I got to choose that one.”

“As in of Assisi,” Nick said, “and it fits.”

 

Kirk barely had time to sit down before Bones came in, shaking his head and indulging in the kind of medical muttering that always followed contact with a more primitive culture. “Okay, who wasn't getting the right treatment?”

“Best they had then, but it was about to kill him. That state trooper Bob? He stopped by the barbecue pit. Mentioned he thought the cold was getting to his chest. I convinced him the new tricorder—nice, by the way, can't wait for those to be stock—was a NASA prototype. I'd never scanned the aftereffects of heavy cigarette smoking. His left main descending, the widowmaker? Ninety-five percent clogged and there was a clot dissolving. That was _after_ Skon thought fast enough to get him to the aspirin and Nick gave him a clotbuster by way of a mint. He'd have gone out on them today.”

Kirk whistled softly. “Do anything for him?”

“No, I let him go home like that.--It's perfectly fixable now. Told him I'd give him a shot that would fix him up. He has a three-month microcrawler that should unplug most of it and a two-week course of the really good new plaque shrinker. It won't undo all the damage, but it should keep him going for a lot of years.” Bones blotted a slice of meat on a paper towel and made a sandwich. “Trying out the mutton. Bite right into this, never worry. Back then, enough grease got in your arteries, there was no help for it. Makes me want to run around town handing out microcrawlers and decalcinol. The lungs, Jim, the lungs, those guys around the pit? Half of them were coughing from the coal dust from working in the mine. I ought to see if the Guardians will let me send back some dust clearance meds. Two have lung cancer and don't know it yet. I gave them pills that should work, but I'll never know.”

“You helped,” he said. It didn't feel like enough. Was it, in the way one could come forward and live and another had to stay behind and die? At least during the Great Rescue there had been no choices to be made; everyone could come through. “Look them up or ask our-time Nick. He'll remember.”

“No wonder Pointy is half crazy. To remember everything, to have your whole life always in your face...I can think of a lot of things I like not being able to remember like it was yesterday. I didn't see Vulcan implode. What was left in sickbay after, that was enough. Can't imagine living there and having almost everyone they knew dead. And they got up again.”

“You can too.” He eyed the doctor. “You're going home.”

Bones looked tired beyond the two days' barbecuing. “Yeah. I'll call Joanna and let her know. She didn't have her flight booked yet. Hell, maybe I'll take one of the offers to have somebody run me down there instead of going commercial. Show up in town with some of your relatives, won't that get the old ladies talking on Main Street. Dave McCoy's boy gets fancy.”

“You'll still be his boy. It won't matter what you do. He was proud of you.”

“Even when,” Bones sighed.

“When you did what he asked, thinking it was the best. He was a good doctor, wasn't he? He'd know enough not to second-guess himself. He acted on the best information at the time.”

Bones stared at the coals. “I have it too.”

“Huh?”

“Same thing, same anemia, would have worked out the same if I hadn't known there was a cure. The first one didn't work on me, well, it worked some, not enough. I always blew the side effects off as drinking or hangovers. Some of it was, you know that, but Spock never did believe me. I'd say that and he'd give me the look that goes straight through you.”

“Yeah. But it wasn't his life, so of course he kept his mouth shut.” _Wanna bet he knew exactly what it was and kept researching it behind Bones' back?_ The answer was immediate: _Of course I did_. Spock's presence in the back of his mind was a dark, peaceful note like night wind on a distant hill. It worked wherever he was, whenever he was. Hadn't Prime heard his Jim across a galaxy even through the hard wall of Kolinahr?

“When we were on Yorktown I found the second drug trial and signed up.” Funny how that had happened. “Got my results back a month later. That'll take care of it. Just like that. Bone marrow will bother me for quite a while, legs will always ache when I'm on my feet too long. Otherwise, I'd have had a year or so and the last six months wouldn't have been good. I wouldn't be here now.”

The unwanted vision was bad enough. He had to keep going past it. “Which means your dad might not have been able to use the first one, either. Another seven years, Bones. From everything you've told me, he didn't have another seven months.”

“He didn't have another seven _weeks_ with what he had to use, but t he first new drug I tried might have held it long enough. I did ask the Guardians. Shouldn't have happened, they say, another bent time effect. He should have seen the clinical trials of the first drug, should have been able to get in. A lot shouldn't have happened—my divorce wasn't one of the things, unfortunately.”

The coals were interesting. “They told me Dad should have lived, but no matter what, Mom would have divorced him when she ran into Frank. No matter what, Frank would have been a...and no matter what, I'd still end up going to stay with my grandparents on Tarsus 4. Maybe you had to look that particular horror in the eye or you wouldn't be the doctor you are.”

“I don't know when or if I'll be allowed to fix it. The only thing I do know is I need to go back home this Christmastime.” Bones poked the bag of sandwich buns. “Roast mutton sandwich?”

Yes, actually; he had been slinging food so fast all day that he'd barely taken time to eat any, and the shoulder roast was falling off the bone, if thin slices were a good idea because it was a bit stringy. “Remarkably good for a sheep whose hormones got him in trouble.”

“I knew he'd get sympathy from you. I saw the head. Fierce-looking, not unlike the Capellan ambassador. They even both had black horns.”

“I think Sarek was ready to barbecue that one for putting lumps on Spock. Eh, Vulcan fathers aren't nearly as protective as the mothers are.”

Bones chortled in spite of himself. “I had no idea T'Rana had that much of a right hook. She laid that Klingon out like a carpet. Or, as she said during the trial, he had offended her daughter. When does this have to be done, anyway?”

“There's a church service at midnight and everybody will start showing up to get some of the baccala or mutton or whatever. Some people had a tradition of eating a big meal then, some just have fish and wait till the next day. Many people as are stuck in town, this may be handy.” He sniffed. “I guess we're short of bread, but I take it future-Nick is taking care of that.”

 

The Knights of Columbus were about to have some sort of men's celebration, which, Sarek gathered, was not the family occasion the earlier brunch had been, nor inclusive of all the neighboring small towns' K of C groups. He had been dispatched to bring the keg. The five-mile trip had taken him two hours, including a long wait in Butler when he had been stuck in front of the main department store. Wandering around in it had been educational, and the wallet he carried was nearly empty when he left with his arms full.

When he returned to town at last, the number of cars from people crowding close to the churches, as well as those of lost travelers or those waiting at the train station, clogged the main street. It was easier to throw the keg on his shoulder and walk than it would have been to search for a parking space. Even with the cold air, the walk suited his mood.

The Capellan ambassador's rude behavior--all right, assault with intent to kill-- had unsettled him more than needed be. He examined why. Most ambassadors deferred even necessary physical violence to their underlings. Had Vulcan society not done exactly that for several hundred years? Not dealing with threats in a direct way had allowed the old High Council, then the Council of Elders, to feign pacifism while still enjoying the benefits of the Terrans' military action. Terrans, after all, were “less than” and couldn't be expected to follow Surak. No one minded when they exhibited their uncontrolled emotions in a useful way.

More to think about, in an already crowded mind, on a day when he should have been in the office doing—doing what, precisely? Time in the past did not count, the Guardians always said; doubtless he would return to find faithful Soran processing the same enormous stack of inquiries, half of which would need his personal attention because the situations were unprecedented. How many governments had ever dealt with resurrecting entire populations who had been declared dead? How many had been tasked with deciding inheritances for families whose few survivors had necessarily spent a great deal of money in the others' formerly presumed permanent absences? Had anyone ever dealt with multiple ancestors suddenly brought forward, needing housing and requiring judgments on where they fit in their clans' hierarchy? Logically, it should have been possible for everyone to move in and be back at work the next day. Reality did not resemble that old world in the slightest.

“But she is here,” he said as the snow lashed his face. Doubtless that was the strange wetness. “I did not dare to dream, but she is here.” His hands wanted his harp, to smooth out the day with music, to bury the rough edges, and not with the old stiff melodies that no longer seemed to fit. The new world needed new music, and he had no idea how to make it happen, only that it had to be and his hands would be among the ones to do it. Davy would want his lyrics he had sent a song and a few words, and it needed the rest when he could work.

Amanda must have been walking up the street in her own year, because she was present beside him, the way she had felt when she was, in theory, dead in his shattered timeline. He reached for her hand before he thought better of it; was it his imagination that her fingers brushed his own, her mind his thoughts? _I wish you were here now. It is not logical. I am not logical. I want you here._

 _Honey, you want me wherever you can get me._ It was an old joke from those first, rather athletic days of their physical relationship. The wind might have been cold, but the thought warmed him in a very pleasant way.

_Indeed, there is a snowbank here we may have missed. We have babysitters available. Perhaps we should remedy that. Have you heard from Spock?_

_He has the permission he requested. Her family is conducting a party for them_.

_My misgivings that he would never be content are put to rest._

_Maybe so, but he did choose an awfully feisty Human. Do you think that can work?_

_Come over here and ask that. I'll be glad to explore the matter with you_. He realized he had almost walked past the church. He found the smaller house at the back of the lot, where two dozen men waited, smiling when they saw his burden. One stepped up to open the gate. “Now that's-a what we got in mind! The women got their party, we got ours!”

He noticed the lights in the church basement and heard squeals of childish laughter. Billy leaned in. “Don't mind him, we all go see the program later, but a little beer makes it easy to sit through.”

“I got eight kids,” the first man said. “Kinda got the program memorized.”

“You heathens,” said the solid little Irishman with the clerical collar. He was, in face and accent, the compact version of dear Father Flanagan who had married him and Amanda. “Give the man a chance, hey?--and thank you. We didn't know if you could get through at all.”

Billy took a big plate of sandwiches to the basement while the rest of the men helped themselves to the buffet. They urged Sarek to do the same, and after a moment he realized there was a decent amount of food he could eat with a clear conscience. The cheese pizza was much better than anything he had eaten from Stella's on long nights at the office. He rather liked the cola. After half an hour, with the men beginning to get rowdy and sing, the priest came over to drop off his empty plate and eyed Sarek up. “This is as good a time as you feel like having.”

“Well, yes. I am not much of a drinker. Not that it offends me that they are.”

The eyes saw...how? The man was Human. “You're worried. Care to talk about it?”

The proper thing to do was apologize for the emotion, however well masked and however good this one was at seeing past it. He did not care about the proper thing. “Perhaps.”

“I'm in the business, ya know? Come with me. I was about to go gather up the trash over at the kids' party so it won't be such a big job for the moms.” They stepped outside. “So. You know whatever you tell me I have to keep my mouth shut. Or do you?”

“Believe it or not, Father, I do. And...it has been many years since my last confession.”

The priest blinked, then grinned. “That makes it easier! I know there are people in town who didn't come from Serbia even if that's what their papers say. I know things aren't the same where you're from...or possibly _when_ , because that kind of thing happens too.”

“Indeed it does, and you are correct in both assumptions. I am at best eighteen and a half percent Serbian, and I am not from now.”

“I am, but my grandmother, God rest her Betazoid soul...I understand you're not supposed to talk about how you feel, but what's eating at you? It's not your wife. Kids? It feels like kids.”

“An older stepson who was estranged and has just recently been able to reconnect. He was...a problem child. An older son I knew as family but didn't know was mine. My son with my wife, whose upbringing I have misjudged at every turn, and now, our late in life surprise. He is an absolute gift, and I have no idea how to avoid the errors I made with the others.”

“Then you have hit exactly the right spot. Down the hall past the kitchen we got Father Pat's confession booth, where nobody hears and you might even get some good advice. Right this way.”

 

The other church's children's party was just letting out when Nick and Maggie shepherded their crew up the sidewalk. Rana and Arre had come along with surprising alacrity. Old Mrs. Radic stumped along ahead of them, leaning on the arm of Santa Claus and giving him an earful. “For them you do, for ours you do. Ya. Kids all think same Santa that way. St. Nicholas be proud of you.” She smirked and slid her clouded eyes toward Nick as he caught up to her. “Is not like you do this all _time_ , ja?” She did like to needle Nick about what she knew. She never let on where she was from, or more like when; she had been born in San Francisco “sometime before 1893,” she had come to town after the war, and that was all anyone knew about her.

“Father Pat talk you into it?” Santa nodded. “I figured. He's a good guy.”

The Santa costume had loose enough sleeves for Sarek to do his customary glide with hands folded under the fur cuffs. It was, Nick could feel, no longer a dire necessity, but a habit; the perpetual pain and aching reaction to cold were gone. So, he noted, was most of the spiritual agitation he had sensed earlier. His grandson kept his eyes on the sidewalk as he spoke. “Kirk and the doctor are tending the restaurant and getting the mutton ready as you wished. I made another pot of coffee while I was there to change. Your other self seems to have made an entire oven full of bread. Still, the number of storm refugees is substantial for such a small town to absorb. I counted forty-seven who have come into the diner and there are many more elsewhere in town.”

Maggie shrugged. “Everyone will be taken care of. You'll see.”

Nick nodded. “We've done it before when a whole Greyhound bus got stuck here in a blizzard. It would surprise me if we don't lose power tonight in all this cold wind. We've got the mine right there with the big generator and it doesn't take me long to tap the restaurant in if the watchmen helps. They'd rather we keep it to an as-needed emergency basis, but the superintendent is generous—not the big boss, he's a royal son of...nothing good, but the super is all right. I am reminded that he told me go look around the old store in the clubhouse and take anything left we can use for the people. I'll go soon as we're done here. I know where things are.”

“If you need help, sir,” Chekhov said.

“If you want, but we'll get you a good flashlight and I'll go first. The floor's weak in the back and I wouldn't be too sure who's been in there off and on.” The kids had skipped ahead, with Arre happily in tow, to meet classmates who were also homing in on the church. Some of the traveling kids were watching with curiosity, their parents hanging back awkwardly. That wouldn't do. “Come on in, folks, we have plenty. If you're not Orthodox, we won't mind.”

“Um,” said a bashful, bespectacled young man with a beard. On closer inspection, he had long, curled locks of hair at the corners of his jaw. “We are Orthodox, but...not exactly this kind.”

Maggie stepped in before he could. “See that white house with black shutters? I bet Mr. and Mrs. Rabin would be glad to have you. Their kids are all over the state and don't make it home much any more. Esther still cooks for an army every weekend and she keeps serious kosher.”

“Really? I mean...seriously?”

“Seriously. Christmas is kind of hard for them because we're all partying and this is one time they don't want to be included. You'd make them very happy by stopping in.” The couple went off, trailing thanks behind them.

Old Mrs. Radic merely smiled. “Ya, better. Everything goes good, ja.”

“You think so?” Nick asked her. She gave him a catlike old smile over her shoulder.

“I know so. Guardians know me, ja, we talk a lot. Bad things happen when they happen. You take care of happening the good ones.”

 

In deep thought, Sarek nearly ran into the side gate between the diner and the mine property. When he opened the gate and carefully closed it behind him, he turned at a sound to see a strange car in the driveway. It was all he could do to control his face when he saw the man who got out.

“Mikey,” past-Nick said. The word carried a dozen overtones, from exasperation to affection to deep concern. The newcomer looked up wearily. “You okay?”

“Eh. Still a little messed up from last night. Tonight's gig was canceled, so we just took off. It was a long bad drive. We dodged a couple roadblocks.” There was no mistaking this kinsman. It was as disturbing as it was fascinating to see his own thin strong hands take out a cigarette and light it, kindling a curl of smoke in the cold air. “Gloria's been...”

“I can tell. Gloria, why don't you go up and lie down?”

The woman in question had gone from the car to lean over the bushes. She was thin, pale, about forty like the newcomer. Her face was drawn and nothing seemed right with her or—yes, even at this distance, the unborn life within. Female, badly wanted, but not wanted; Gloria seemed to be alternately grasping for her and wishing her away: _Either way, you will never forgive me; either way, it cannot end well_. “I'll be all right,” she said, her eyes sagging to the snow. “But maybe so.”

“The kids are watching cartoons up there, so you might want to go use our bed.” It was nearly a warning. “Lie down and don't think about anything for a while.”

Gloria shot Nick a look of desperate gratitude. Nick watched her to the top of the steps, turned away and made that small prayerful gesture. “Bozhe, what a mess.”

“I paid back all but a thousand.” The newcomer's voice was worn out. “Last night, could have given him another hundred easy, with tips, but he said it wouldn't be good enough. I didn't bother pawning the bass if there might be work, but with this storm, the Burgh is closed too.”

“How long do you have?”

“Christmas afternoon. He said he'd give me that. I had so hoped there'd be more money so she wouldn't think she had to. It's gone a little long, but before Christmas—we just couldn't, either of us.”

Nick put a hand on the drooping shoulder. “This is right where Reverence for Life Street runs into None Of My Business Avenue, but she doesn't want to and neither do you, am I right?” Mikey nodded. “Then let me think. Now go talk to your sister, hey?”

Future-Nick was busy at the grill with his other half occupied, so Sarek fell in with them to get caught up. Between pancake retrievals he asked “Is that also me?”

“No, but now you know who you really look like. That is Maggie's only brother, all the kin she has left in this world beyond this house.”

The halo of sorrow around the man was nearly unbearable; hadn't his own been? He understood what it must have cost Spock to be around him as a child. “The weight on him is too great.”

“Drinking, gambling, running up debts, finally getting to where he nearly has them paid, but the mobster he works for is suddenly in a hurry. Tell me what you know about Gloria and that baby.”

He hadn't been close enough to do a detailed analysis. If his impression turned out to be true, Carbon Creek might be the safest place for both. “Gloria believes she is almost twelve weeks pregnant. She is nearly twenty and there are problems, albeit manageable. The likelihood of her dying from the standard termination procedure is ninety-four percent. If a competent doctor informed of the complications delivers her child surgically near term, the odds of a successful birth and recovery are roughly ninety-two point five percent.”

“That agrees with what I sense. What can we do?”

“She would take any excuse not to give up this child. So would he. That would be enough. If she will permit it, we need to ask Dr. McCoy for a tricorder scan and his perspective on human anatomy. Is there a doctor here in town you trust?”

“Yes. Doc Cochrane knows where I'm from and keeps his mouth shut. We work together on medical instruments we can patent given existing or soon to be available technology.” Nick exhaled through his teeth. “Ever since he got both legs broken jumping into Normandy on D-day, Mikey hasn't found his place. Gloria took him in a year ago and he's been a lot better and paying things off as fast as he can. He's straight most of the time except for gigs, works all he can, hasn't been in any new trouble and could have a really good life as soon as he gets rid of that small remaining debt he owes to Guido. I don't get it. Guido's boss and I know each other and he's a reasonable man, but Guido isn't. He's got to come up with a thousand tomorrow.”

“But you have that.”

“Getting him to take it is the problem. He won't consider running the diner for us, even though we need help and it would give him and Gloria a solid living away from the wrong people they're hanging out with. She's the only good thing in his life. Most of the recording studios in Pittsburgh are less than an hour down the road, he'd have evenings and weekends, we're all here to help...hell's bells, what else could he _want_?” Nick slapped a pancake turner down to shovel up another batch while his other self dispensed more bacon. “But he has pride. This is all I have to work with: he wants that baby. More importantly, _she_ wants that baby. They know it's their last chance. They're afraid, and they don't even know the worst. 'First, you must cast out fear'—and they have not. And it may kill her.” Nick sighed and looked up. “Ah. They have arrived.”


	5. Nothing Much Happened, Except...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't tie this up in this chapter, and it really needs an epilogue :)

The Orthodox children's party had disgorged its little crowd. Kirk helped the fire department clean up the barbecue pit, then swept up around the back of the diner and dumped the overflowing trash cans while the Nicks and Sarek fed the stranded travelers. No one else was around when Amanda strolled out of the garage. “Look out, James is--”

“DIM!” The toddler launched himself at Kirk, who barely had time to take Sarek's advice and take the blow on his hip. The force of the collision worried him, but James merely let go of Kirk's legs, made a face, rubbed his nose and said “Hmph. Hi!”

McCoy smiled down at him, hands on hips. “So, James, I take it you're excited?”

“Ya! See Dreat-dramma Baggy.” He looked up at the doctor and decided to hug him, too, but not as hard. “I careful you legs hurt.”

“How'd you...Never mind.” James seemed to want up, so McCoy stretched out his hands. The toddler swung up to the doctor's hip. “You like this town?”

“Ha. Smells different.” He was clearly scanning his surroundings, though Kirk was not sure how many of his seven senses he was using. Goodness knew James had them in abundance. “Scary things. Is the police okay? The sick man, chest hurt?”

It was a good thing Bones was used to Spock. “Yeah, we got him all fixed up.”

He listened again, still concerned. “Sick baby, other sick baby, o'sa'mekh all worried, mean people cause trouble, no good. You fix, Dim?”

“You bet. That's what we do.”

Amanda looked around. “They let us come a little early. I thought we were going to have to wait till much later. Where is everyone?”

“Most of them, except the Nicks, are up at the church just getting done with the party cleanup. Sarek came back long enough to pick up the candy everyone forgot in the excitement and hoofed it back over so he could hand it out to the kids. I ducked out and changed as soon as there was a chance.”

“So the parties all went well, the food got done when it should...?”

“Perfectly. It's _all_ perfect, except the roads are closed, there are over fifty extra people stuck in town, all we have to feed them right now that we know almost everyone can eat is pancakes, one of the family presents may or may not get here, Maggie's brother and his girlfriend are in a huge mess of some kind, there was a huge pileup on the hill right up that way that apparently almost ended life as we know it, the Orthodox priest is on the same train with the present and might not make it by time for him to do the midnight church thing, and we're all sleeping over at Nick and Maggie's new house but we're not allowed to tell her about it yet because it's a surprise.”

“Oh, is that all.” Amanda really had been a diplomat's wife for a long time.

“By the way, we don't have Solkar?”

“He started to come out with me, looked at Nick and ducked back to our time. Said he'd be here in less than five minutes.”

The rest of the party went off happily. Kirk shrugged at the newly arrived future Nick, who wasn't surprised. “You don't have to explain to Spock, I don't have to explain to John. He picked up on the priest problem.”

“He's going to get one in five minutes?”

“Um, he _is_ one,” Nick said. “Not just the Vulcan kind. You know about the Black Chapel.”

“Yeah, but until now it hadn't made a lot of sense to me. It's what's left from all over, isn't it?”

“If it was religious and we had it before the Eugenics Wars, we stashed it in there. The army wrecked everything out here, but they never looked in the scary old abandoned coal mine that had blown up a couple of times.”

“Talk about things that never should have...Whoa.” He had almost gotten used to John turning into Solkar of Vulcan. This was a whole new twist. He carried vast quantities of embroidered finery over his arm as he ducked out of the portal all silver and black. “You, uh. Yeah.”

“It's Christmas. Time for all the trimmings. There's a decent way I have to put all of these bits on that calls for being in the church. If anyone asks, I'm traveling and stuck in town too.” As always, when John turned into his majestic self, he brushed by Kirk with a mental grin: _Still me. It's okay_.

“Like Superman and the phone booth,” present-Nick agreed fondly. “He does look spiffy when he gets all that stuff on.”

“You had to dress up when you were an ambassador.”

“Another part of the job to put up with. Like I told you back when, it's the first thing you learn, to blend in. Don't stick your head up until you're ready. When you do, make it count.”

“Old Vulcan proverb?”

“No, Billy's dad. He fought in the trenches in World War I, so he meant it literally.--Anything doing with those awful uniforms Chris was trying to get fixed?”

“Yep. Straight-up Vulcan fatigues in Starfleet color coding and insignia, soft, comfortable and they don't show dirt. I don't roll the sleeves up on those, though.”

“Ha!--you should. Next bar fight, you can remind the other guy you had your sleeves rolled up to warn him you were gonna finish what he started and he can't say squat about it.”

“Does it still count if I'm always the one getting carried off?”

“Spock needs to teach you better, then. It would help if you didn't pick fights with augments, Romulans, Klingons, Vulcans, hybrids...”

“I've been trying never to tick John off.”

“He's hit one person in all the years I've known him, and that was me, and he was trying to get me to come out of a healing trance when I really didn't want to. I was hallucinating being here, see.” Nick chortled. “I think he knocked me all the way back to our time, whenever that really is. We have several more very small adjustments left. I never know what might be a side effect, but I can hope.”

“Bud and Patty. Among so many deaths that seemed so random, so arbitrary.”

“You mean like your dad, too. Lena, of course she and Ty came with me. Bud and Patty were too depressed with what was going on to even think about it. Bud's wife was real sick too, Patty was divorced and alone, their kids didn't dare come around. They should have come with us even if they'd have had to wait two hundred years before they could stick their noses out of stasis.”

Spock had once said the two of them were far too much alike. Kirk understood, the way he knew Nick needed a change of subject pronto. “So. Everything's set at the church?”

Nick gave him a grateful little smirk and glanced in that direction. “You don't have to come with us, can if you want. It's a long drawn-out service that involves a lot of standing around and occasional religious-themed calisthenics, plus singing. Most of us will make excuses to duck in and out, especially the kids, who will be running around like maniacs because they're so tired. The last few years we put them in the car and drove them around to look at lights after the kids' party, so they all conked out for a couple of hours in the back seat and we woke them up for church and midnight supper. This time the roads have us locked in and there's too much going on. Even hybrids...you know what Spock's like when he's tired and won't admit it.”

“Ohh yes. He keeps going till he falls asleep at his station whether he wants to or not, or until he gets hurt badly enough that Bones takes him prisoner in sick bay.”

“I'm relieved to have missed his toddler years. There was too much of John in him. Le-matya kittens are not chew toys, you shouldn't accept an offer to go really fast on a horse even if the horse thinks it's funny, and it's best to wait until you're at least a teenager before you try making homemade explosives.” Nick made a face. “Sybok wasn't my favorite person when I found out what he was up to. He's still half afraid to get around me, but I do believe he's fixed for good now. I'm glad you weren't around when all that was on or he'd have dragged you into his games. Now. Soon as we get this last batch to those kids out front, we can go over to the old clubhouse and see what we can scare up between now and midnight.”

“Yeah, I--” There seemed to be a commotion up the street. “Are you kidding me?”

“That's an old argument. Let me guess, he got into the whiskey and tore into her about the dent on the station wagon from this afternoon. Hadn't been for Skon standing there, according to the Guardians, the truck would have followed the laws of physics, burned and then exploded, the gas station would have gone up, she'd have been killed—so would Soren, for that matter—and the whole town would have been flattened in the wars, not to mention that thing where most of the East Coast would be unrecognizable instead of just mildly uninhabitable. But, that's taken care of.”

“Oh, is that all.” The disturbance up the street was getting louder, and Kirk turned to watch it again. “Um. It looks like the kids' party must have let out, because there's Santa, and I do believe he's going to have a conversation with that man.”

 

 _Normally_ , Sarek thought, _Santa Claus does not lift grown men from the floor. Of course, normally, one does not abuse one's spouse for a failing she could not have prevented_. “I would advise you to stop threatening your wife, especially in front of half the town's children.”

“Yeah, well, I would _advise_ you to put me down and mind your own damn business.” That seemed a cheeky statement from a man whose feet were dangling well above the porch.

“I am minding my business. When someone is being abused, it is the business of everyone to stop it. What part of 'this accident was not her fault and the minor damage to her car is easily repaired' do you not understand?”

“Aw, everything's that damn broad's fault! If it wasn't for her--”

“If it wasn't for her,” one of the town's men said, “you'd be out on your ass, Jeff. The way you cut up there's nobody in this town would rent to you, and it's a good thing she has her mom's old place. You'd blame all your screw-ups at work on your crew—oh, wait, you do that already. She wouldn't have been out in the car in this weather if she hadn't been trying to bring home your beer. Don't pretend we don't all know how she got the black eye last week. If it wasn't Christmas, and that road was open, you'd be on it.”

The police chief produced handcuffs and rattled his jail keys. “Jeff, you're drunk. You get to spend tonight in the lockup and if you behave decent I'll let you out tomorrow, but it's her call whether you get to come back to the house or not.”

Sarek lowered the man after the cop had the cuffs on. Having his feet on solid ground again only emboldened him. “Aw, come on, it's Christmas!”

“Yeah. That's exactly why you're not going back in that house tonight. We have to listen to you because we have to be at the jail no matter what. She shouldn't have to put up with that. You been nothing but trouble to her since you came to town.”

“Just because I ain't been here two hundred years like all you inbred hicks...” The cop wasn't hearing any more of it, so he dragged the fuming Jeff off to the police station. Behind them there was a general round of snickering.

“Two hundred years,” one man chortled. “Guess me and a few of us mighta been, but most of us just got here, and calling us inbred is a real stretch.”

“Ya, most of us here two hundred months maybe.” The old lady winked at Sarek. “Eh. No more trouble from him now, not tonight. Tomorrow, maybe, but we watch.”

They began to troop back to their houses until the late church services. The children were running on sugar and adrenaline, chattering about what programs they would watch on television. Arre was trying to describe what she had seen in spite of her limited toddler vocabulary. While he was fighting the urge to smile at his sister's attempted eloquence, a small arm wrapped around his knee and a hand wormed its way into his glove. Both might as well have reached straight into his heart. “Elev,” he said, since no one would care.

“Jai'elev,” Amanda replied. The old words had been banned for too long. My love. Dearest love. Yes, those needed to be said in this old world, where everything was new. “It seems you've taken up a few new hobbies since we parted company. Do you usually dress like an ancient saint and pick up miscreants bodily?”

“I must admit it was satisfying.” _And so is this_ , he thought, squeezing her hand and reaching down to James' head.

“What did you think of the party, pizza guy?” one of the twins asked Bud.

“Pretty good. I think James had fun, too.”

“Really good cookies,” little Lena sighed happily.

Pizza guy? Sarek wondered, and the answer came to mind and nearly made him grin. Pi'sa'kai. He wasn't actually their little brother, but he suspected the girls enjoyed annoying him because they were taller than Bud. “Do the three of you speak any other...'Serbian'?”

“Ha, osu,” Patty said. He was pretty sure those weren't words shared with Serbian, but her pronunciation and usage were accurate. If she wanted to go to Vulcan one day...the realization hit him, a fist in the gut. She wouldn't be going there, nor would he again. Maybe the Vulcan families in this town were its first exiles, but he would be among them for the foreseeable future.

 _Unforeseeable does not mean bad. You didn't foresee me in your future,_ Amanda pointed out clear as day through their bond. _Nor did either of us expect James to come back to us, no matter what that kindly nurse said way back when_.

 _Had anyone explained that, I would have thought them quite mad_.

“No mad, Daddy, Christmas,” James said firmly. He thought back the explanation, the difference between anger and mental illness. “Ah.”

“Ya. No Grinch, brudder,” Arre agreed. There were disadvantages to being around tiny empaths, be they sister, son or granddaughter. He resolved to ask his father what difficulties he had encountered in Sarek's own upbringing. His sister had known how to shield almost instinctively; his brother was blessedly psi-normal for a Vulcan, which at times was the only thing about Silek that anyone could call “normal.” Would he think the concept of Christmas gifts...no, it was Silek; he would be amused.

Some mental nudge made him look up. His parents were walking ahead, Rana describing some interesting art at the church, and Skon was looking down at her with such utter unmasked devotion that it was almost painful. The thought behind it was: he had waited a hundred years and walked through time to be able to use the facial expression that reflected his adoration. Amanda let go of his hand and instead snugged her arm around his waist beneath his jacket, the better to think _Exactly_ at him.

 

“Over this way,” present-Nick said. He waved a flashlight to motion them, then let the beam shine on a weak spot in the floor. He rattled the first door to the left, took a card from his pocket and sprung the ancient lock, then set his safety lamp in the middle of an old sales counter and closed the door gently behind them. “So no one hears. The Guardians say any or all of it can safely go forward for study or simple enjoyment. The roof in back is ready to cave and if you sniff a little you'll know some of our lost travelers have tried to use the old fireplace back that way, which will start a rapidly spreading fire in twenty-seven minutes.”

Chekhov stared in distress. “We know, but we can't stop it?”

“In the alternate timeline that does not work well, the fire was discovered and promptly extinguished, so the company let the building stand for thirty more years until it collapsed one summer afternoon and killed four children playing in there, including Zef Cochrane's father. Earth did not achieve warp drive before the Klingon takeover of 2063. Besides, the coal company is going to take its insurance money and run, donating the plot to the fire department so we get the new fire station we need before Hurricane Agnes takes out the old one on its low-lying spot.”

“Right then! No stopping it,” Chekhov said brightly. “Didn't they sell out before they closed it?”

“The store used to be in that big front room, then part of the room, then here in a fraction of the space only because our contract required it. If Barker the crabby old storekeeper felt like unlocking, he did, if he didn't, he didn't. We took the store out of our last contract. I suspect the IRS thinks it's still losing a great deal of money, and no one is about to tell them otherwise. Bark died last spring and no one bothered with it after. There isn't much left, and we can gather it easily.” Nick climbed on the counter, stretched out and tossed a pile of coveralls from a shelf. “Odd sizes. Had they fit any of the town's usual miscreants, they would certainly have disappeared. Since I stole Mac Hartley's clothes on our arrival in town, I cannot say much. They might fit some of our travelers. These inelegant warm hats may be of use. Boots, size 14. Hard hat, of a type no longer used in the mine but of historical interest.” He continued his rapid tour of the mostly barren and partly rotted shelving, unloading into Kirk's or Chekhov's arms for transport to the pickup truck in less than fifteen minutes. “These vegetables in remarkably bubble-shaped cans should stay here for cremation. I'm not sure they wouldn't poison any animal that got into them otherwise.” He leapt down lightly and handed Kirk a curious brass lamp more ornate than his own. “Old style methane detector. Definite historical interest, like this cap lamp from the 1920s.” He filled the box with merchandise that had become mining memorabilia, scouring under the counter. “In this carton are shopworn toys that were popular ten years or more ago. Marbles. Jacks. Fortunately, the mothers are from out of town, so I need not fear their wrath when they step on these damn things barefoot. Toy cars with tailfins. Paper dolls in fashions that went out during World War II, not interesting to the children, but some museum might like them. He really shouldn't have left this old revolver in here, and we need to get rid of the ammunition or send it forward, because it might do unfortunate things in the fire. Here, Pavel, a souvenir for you.”

“Sulu is going to be so jealous,” he chortled, then checked it. “It is not loaded.”

“You know how to check it. Very good.--This icon is a little faded, but your mother might like it.” He handed down a small wooden plaque with a fierce saint. Chekhov tucked it into his shirt reverently. “These seeds may not germinate, but it seems wrong to leave them. Half a dozen old Christmas ornaments in a box. These blankets were Army surplus, but from which war? Here's another box of odds and ends under the old safe. Toy airplanes.” They were small flat packets; Kirk wasn't sure how they made planes, but he duly took the box. Nick poked through it quickly. “A few tiny china baby dolls, four slide whistles with remarkably little rust, alphabet blocks and toy soldiers. I see nothing else we can liberate except for Bark's old jacket.” He tossed it onto his shoulder and looked around. “It is illogical, but I do confess to a certain fondness for this place. My other self will be even more fond of it two years from now when the new fire station is done.”

They stepped out of the storeroom into the main hallway with its peeled paint and icicles hanging like stalactites from the joists around clinging bits of ceiling. “I must imagine I smell smoke,” Nick said casually, and it took Kirk a second to realize he was speaking Golic. “So many people in town. I hope they all know they are welcome here.”

Deep in the square old building, a door creaked. They all held still, knowing Nick's ears would pick up all they needed. “S'haile?” someone whispered. “Is it so?”

“It is so. You are safe here.”

The young man nearly bolted from the room, struggling with his face on the edge of control as he carried a small child, perhaps four years old, wrapped in a coat he doubtless needed for himself. The woman with him shot her eyes from corner to corner, seeking any danger, ready to spring. Nick froze his own face and put up the ta'al. “Live long and prosper. I am Mestral.”

“Peace and long life.” The newcomer's face was wooden, her eyes not, and she also was flushed with fever. “I am S'Kel Rishan. He is Mitik. This...our daughter...”

“She is very ill.” Mitik's voice trembled. So did he. “We drove here from Montana. Base cannot retrieve us. T'Mir said there were Vulcans here.”

“We have healers of our own and a Human doctor who knows who we are. You are cold.” Nick didn't give him a chance to deny it. “I am a Navy medic. May I?” The last thing Mitik wanted to do was let go of the child, but he put her in Nick's arms. She went limply, without resistance or protest, her dark eyes glassy. When she gave a halfhearted cough, it was all too clear that she had given up. Nick folded the coat closely around her. “Little one, you have quite a fever. T'sai, bring your things and let us get out of this old building. It isn't safe at all.”

Rishan dove back into the room and brought out two small suitcases and a tote bag, typical minimalist Vulcan road gear. Nick flipped the old jacket to the young man and devoted his attention to the little girl, leaning his cheek against her forehead. “Pneumonia. What have they tried?”

“Penicillin. It did nothing. She has been sick since fall, but much worse this week.”

“We'll have our healers look at her. I suspect it's the common type that does not respond to penicillin but does very well with a different antibiotic.” The way Nick was cradling the child raised Kirk's suspicions that he knew her. That made no sense at all...did it? On the other hand... “What is your name, little one?” Kirk couldn't quite hear her answer. “Shaishonna. A pleasing and unique name.”

“For the people who took us in,” Rishan said. “The Sho...Shosha...I cannot say it properly.”

Nick turned and led the way out, grinning at Kirk and Chekhov where the parents couldn't see. Kirk hoped he didn't look as stunned as he felt. Spock had remarked that he and Ruven wished to name the next girl child for his great-grandmother, Ru's mother, the exceptional pilot who had pioneered a number of techniques while she made a fortune in space. “Her parents crashed on Earth before first contact and were taken in by the Shoshone nation. The reservation doctor saved the badly injured Mitik's life and said nothing to the authorities. Her mother was unable to pronounce the tribal name as they did, but Ko'mi Shai often said her gratitude was unending.”

The toddler tried to eye Kirk curiously, even through the pallid weakness of her fever and her struggle for breath. “V'tosh?” she murmured. “Human?”

“Mostly Human,” he said as best he could. “But I am kin to Mestral.”

“Good this one.” She laid her head on Nick's shoulder again. “Good both you.”

Her parents were much less certain, though they followed in desperation. Mitik had begun to shiver in earnest, never a good sign; how often had that been Kirk's cue to order Spock to a warm place and make him drink hot tea? He could see the whole pack of kids running back and forth in front of the diner's upstairs windows. Maggie had taken them up to the apartment and was no doubt ensconced in her chair again, waiting for them to run off the last of the day's manic energy. Sarek and Amanda were beside the diner's front door, looking out at the softly falling snow together. Nick shouldered his way in. “Sarek. We need you.”

 

When Nick put the child in his arms, Sarek felt the impact of the creeping death in the little chest. No wonder the girl had all but surrendered. He knew the weight that held back breath, the cough that wore away the will to go on. She was trying to suppress, and he sensed that her mother was dully concerned, her father silently shattered. That was also familiar, though the reason seemed to be that the mother was herself quite ill.

He was illogical enough to wish John would walk in and take over. Instead, Nick opened a packet labeled for the mine and handed him a curious small mask with a canister attached. “Self-rescuer,” he said. “This type is good for half an hour of straight oxygen. We have more on the ambulance.”

“This may suffice.” It would almost have to; either he was going to be able to do enough for her right now or it would be unnecessary. He let her gasp a few breaths while he held the mask for her, and the barest hint of color began to grace her pale lips. “That order pad, Kirk.” He pointed his chin toward it. “One sheet will suffice.” He rolled the sheet into a tube. “Little one, this will help you breathe. Inhale through your mouth as hard as you can as if this were a large straw, let the breath out through your nose and do it again.”

The child obediently put her lips to the rolled paper and Sarek sprayed his own inhaler into it. She took three slow, increasingly deep breaths and gave him an inquiring look.

“Better?” She nodded. “This is good. You need not speak until you have the breath for it. Give it a minute or two. Until then, nod or shake your head.” He carried her back to the walk-in closet he had been using to sleep, since everyone else had staked out every flat surface available, and set her down on the sleeping bags on the floor. “May I touch your ribs here, and your back here?” Another grave nod. He put his hands on either side of her small torso. There it was, the dullness, the load on her right lung. “Ah. Pneumonia, indeed. I am something of a connoisseur, as often as I have it myself. A scan will tell the story, but we can treat that. The medicine for it is not unpleasant. I have some.”

The girl muted her surprise. So did her mother. “You have it here, osu?”

“Indeed, o'ko'm--” Sarek stopped himself just in time to avoid calling her “grandmother.” “I was a very early baby and my lungs have more than occasionally been unkind to me. Most often it is my inherited susceptibility to this bacterium. During my travels I have learned not to leave home without an inhaler and a fresh antibiotic pack. I, er...prefer the strawberry chewable tablets myself.”

“Strawberry,” the little girl sighed. “I cannot eat but strawberry is good.” She tried to cough again. Sarek held her lower ribs lightly, giving her enough strength to keep breathing the oxygen as the inhalant began to work its usual magic.

“You have not felt well for a very long while.”

Her mother nodded. “Since summer's end.” Three or four months? Forever, to a small child. No wonder she looked so defeated. “This week she suddenly became much worse. On the way here she has eaten nothing and been able to drink very little.”

“The pneumonia upsets her digestion. When you cough as hard as we do, and it goes on for this long, the very thought of food is difficult. We can have that under control tonight. More importantly, I believe you have another, related persistent lung infection called tuberculosis. Unless we treat that one, you will continue to be sick and may eventually contract another illness that will not resolve in a satisfactory way. You will need to take medication for that for several months, as I once had to. It is quite common among Vulcans who live in close contact with many humans, as we have little if any natural resistance. First we will use a quick-acting antibiotic as an injection, so it will work now. To it I will add this for your stomach and this for the fever. Both should work in two to three minutes. May I?”

She nodded, trying not to look nervous. He put his right thumb at the base of her skull and popped the hypo on the same side of her neck. She did not flinch, but looked a bit surprised. “Doctor hurts, you do not.”

“Doctor may not know that technique for getting rid of injection pain. My grandmother taught me many years ago when I was your age. You can do that for yourself when necessary.”

Chekhov had rounded up Bones, who was mildly worse for wear due to the fire department's ongoing festivities. He pulled his scanner from his pocket. “Ah. Pneumonia, and underlying TB, which was far too common on reservations back then. What have you done for her so far?” Sarek gave him the details, at which he looked mildly crestfallen. “Well, he...ck, you took care of it in fine style. It's been rough on her, but it'll clear up now. We should put her on a long course of resperinol syrup. Mestral has some here. Looks like it's flavored.”

“Strawberry too?” the little girl wheezed.

Bones checked the label on the concentrate and looked perplexed. Sarek felt him think _How did he know they'd need—he brought the flavor she—_ “Strawberry it is. You could use some IV fluids. Nothing else for me to do for this little lady except mention she looks as bright as she is pretty.”

“That would be accurate,” her father said, barely letting himself look hopeful.

“Sir, you're incredibly tired and you look half frozen.” Ah. He did not need to caution Bones not to reach out to the man. Exposure to Spock had indeed had a beneficial effect.

“The truck heater was not all that functional and the air coming in behind this snow is quite cold. We traveled in it.” Mitik looked down at his lightly frostbitten fingers. “We had to drive. The truck is old, we dared not be seen in daylight, but the holy man at the town told us we would find what we sought here. We could not risk her getting cold, of course. We were concerned about inadvertent contact when we arrived here at dawn, and we were relieved to find that old building had a fireplace. It did not draw properly. We had so little fuel. I am used to building fires at our cabin with cured dry wood.”

“Yeah, that would be a problem when what you have to use is soggy and rotten. Ask Nick to go over the truck and help you with any repairs before you go home. Montana's a long way off. Southwest of Bozeman, you say? I've been up that way a couple of times.” It was doubtless true, considering the enterprise had attended three First Contact anniversary commemorations. Bones turned to Rishan with his best charm. “Ma'am, have you by any chance been ill?”

She had, and not slightly. She would have found it unthinkable to slouch, but he felt how much she wanted to. “Mildly. I have not attended to my state owing to hers.”

“I believe you have tuberculosis as well. Also, I've seen a lot of vitamin deficiency in Vulcans. If I may?” He used the scanner. “Our sun's wavelength doesn't agree with your systems as well as yours does, as you might expect. Your immune systems are suffering as a result. You would do a lot better with a strong supplement to start with. All of you should be supplementing with at least a thousand units of vitamin D daily, a good multivitamin and vitamin C-rich food. You should also take a full course of resperinol along with her. Also, I'm not that good at neuropressure, but sir, you could use an adjustment for your old back injury.” He began to fiddle with his vitamin pack.

“Doctor.” Sarek motioned to Rishan's neck. “If you put your thumb just there—a bit to the left, there—you will find it of use.”

The hypo popped, Rishan didn't move and Bones looked mystified. “It didn't hurt?”

“It should not. That bit of neuropressure is all you need. A very wise woman gave me that instruction.” He looked down at Shaishonna, who was still leaning heavily on his chest. “Your color is better already and your fever is much less. Does it feel so?”

“Ha, osu.” She blinked up at him with those midnight eyes he remembered, not yet as worldly wise, but already deep and kind. “It does not hurt as much to breathe and my stomach does not feel quite as bad.”

Bones gave up on the scanner and felt her forehead. “That surely is working. We should give you some fluids and glucose in a vein, then you could try to drink some juice.”

“That would be acceptable.” It was comical to hear the big words from her tiny mouth.

He took out one of the small Vulcan fluid packs and looked to Sarek. “Will the thumb thing work for an IV, too?”

“For that, put your thumb over the ulnar nerve.” It worked as well. “You have excellent control, little one.” Shaishonna tried not to look proud. Sarek propped her up on a couple of folded blankets. “We will use the inhaler again in six hours exactly as we did before, then thereafter only as you need it. The treatment after this will not be bad. By morning, you should have more energy and less fever, and by the day after, you will be much improved. These strawberry tablets will last you ten days. When you finish the last one, you need only take five milliliters of the syrup once a day. It neither tastes bad nor has upsetting effects, and continuing will ensure you do not pass this infection to others who may not be vaccinated as we are.”

Mitik had warmed enough to feel all of the pain and exhaustion from the harrowing trip. “The doctor said he had another kind of medicine, but he would have to report that he had used it, there would be questions, there were side effects and he was unsure, that it was better to come here. We were already on the road when she became so very sick. Should we have...?”

“No, he was correct. The standard therapy for humans is difficult for us and especially for children, and it is not as effective as this. Do you have a replicator from your ship?”

“We do.”

“I will give you the formula and you can keep it on hand in case of further problems. If you are not as fond of strawberry as Shaishonna and I, I would suggest peach.”

“Do you think I will get well?” It was a terribly adult question, and it was all he could do not to lay his own head against that black silk hair. As an adult, she would wear it long and loosely tied back, and when he was a child he had often played with it idly while they were in flight.

“I am all but certain of it. By spring, you will feel much better, but it will be important to continue taking the medication until you use it all. I would also anticipate that you will begin to grow again.” It was daunting to think what kind of growth spurt she was going to have with the load off.

Amanda came to the door and said, in her nearly perfect Golic, “I turned up the heat a little more and brought more blankets. You can all lie down, she can have her fluids, I'll bring juice and toast and we'll get the three of you settled.”

Rishan gazed at her for a moment. “Cheyenne and Cherokee?”

Amanda smiled. “And a few other bits.”

“You understand us,” the newcomer said. “This healer is your mate?”

“Thirty-eight years' worth, yes. It's no longer unusual in our time.” Shock registered for that fraction. “I know you're not supposed to admit that time bends when you move in space.”

“Yet it does.” Rishan nodded to herself. “I know it does. And so it _is_ true.”

“As long as you go right back to Vulcan the way you came, using exactly the same launch point at which you arrived and keeping your speed constant, it all comes out even,” Nick confirmed. “If necessary, a two percent reduction in speed will give you plausible travel time. Unless that's not what you want when you go back.”

“If we ever have permission to return.” Rishan was calm, but behind her eyes was despair. Many years ago, Sarek had heard whispers of some difficulty with the High Council over T'Rishan's scientific opinions; now he knew they must have concerned time travel.

“You will have it. Shai will be a better woman for knowing life here, but she will be your very Vulcan daughter. You may suspect why I know, and without saying it...you are correct.” Nick excused himself, then leaned back in. “You may want to hold your ears when the fire siren starts. The wind should take the smoke in that direction, not toward us. There is no reason for concern here.”

“The smoke from--” The siren's howl was muted in the closet. “I hope we did not...”

“You did,” Nick shrugged, “but it is very much best for all concerned, and the town should be thankful, not to mention the company that owns that ruin.” He strolled off.

“Fa'sa'mekh is an interesting man,” Sarek said. He checked the fluid bag. “That will do. Mitik, if you would like, I can attempt that adjustment.”

Mitik was unable to lie down, in spite of what had to be iron control; Rishan had to help him. “Lift his right shoulder toward you. Just so.” Sarek put his whole weight into the maneuver, causing a loud crunch. “The other will be more difficult.”

James appeared in the doorway, rubbing his eyes and looking mostly asleep on his feet but determined. He blinked at Shaishonna. “You better now?”

“Yes.” She looked more alert, enough to eye him up with amazement. “V'tosh? But human?”

“Ha. Kinswoman.” He tossed his chin at Sarek, then at Amanda. “Sa'mi, ko'mi, both.”

“Fascinating.”

He looked down at Mitik. “His back hurt. Like my sa'mi's. I help fix.”

It might have been a ridiculous idea, but Sarek began to see the wisdom. “Just so, James. If you would find the hot spot and put your heel on it, then allow me to turn him so.” If James could hold perfectly still and Mitik relaxed enough, and he put his own knee at just the right point on the spine...The crunch was loud, but heralded instant relief. Mitik might try to mask it all he wished; the aural shift from angry spikes to calm was still evident.

“All fixed,” James said, and hopped off Mitik's back.

“There will be some muscle stiffness and soreness for a day, possibly two. It would be best to use an anti-inflammatory for at least three days.”

“I have that,” Bones offered. He checked the scanner. “It's safe for him. Nick can't have this or he's mean for a week.”

Nobody was apt to forget that anytime soon, especially the numerous people Nick had bawled out under the influence—including, Sarek recalled, his own alternate universe self, who had received an earful of unsolicited, pointed and effective advice. He looked down at Shaishonna and James, who had shuffled over to sit beside her. “You are better,” James said to her. “You were very, very sick.”

“Yes. It is much better now, but I am still ill.” Even through the slowly improving lethargy, she eyed him up and down sharply—another mannerism she would never lose, not even on her deathbed nearly three hundred years in the future. “You are kin. I do not know how, but you are. Or you will be.”

“Yeah,” James shrugged. “You fly when you get bigger?”

“I would like to be a pilot like Mother. Perhaps I will not crash so much. You?”

“Healer,” he said without an instant's hesitation. “I study now so when I get big I don't wait a hundred years like sa'mi did.”

Sarek hastened to add. “We cannot explain, but at one point we had a temporary shortage of medical personnel. All of our ambassadors are now fully trained medics.”

“Wise,” Rishan said. “Perhaps I should use the self-study course. The winters are so long on the reservation, and there is very little to do besides study and meditate.”

“Just so. The self-study is what I had to use, with help from my grandfathers.”

“They were good teachers,” Mitik said. He did not seem disposed to move from his flattened position. Sarek inferred that he had poured his energy into breathing for the little one. “Is she...actually better?”

Bones did have a reassuring smile. “I agree with my small colleague. We'll leave her on the oxygen till it runs out because she'll rest better with it.”

“Little one, do you know how to go into a healing trance?” She nodded. “Then all of you may. We will wake you tomorrow.”

The family settled into rest, Shaishonna nestled between her exhausted parents. Bones set his tricorder to monitor remotely and motioned everyone else out. “They should be fine. That's good, because I'm not too sure about the rest of the town.”

 

A three-story building erupting in flames was eye-catching, to say the least. It certainly had Nick's attention as he watched the fire truck's gauges for the third time that weekend. The whole town had turned out to watch and had judged the clubhouse a lost cause, as his older self had hinted; even had mutual aid been possible from the surrounding departments, the building would have been difficult, if not impossible, to save. The bigger task was watering down the buildings around it and keeping a close eye out for windblown embers as the storm to the east spun up a gale. The public school had torn down a house on the corner for a parking lot, which was all that kept the building from going up. Bud commiserated with some of the other children, who were crushed by disappointment. “Ours isn't that much better,” he consoled them. “I don't think you'd get out for long no matter what.”

“It might have smoke damage,” Patty ventured hopefully. “But I guess it would air out by next week anyhow.”

Lena thought that over. “Our big brother works for NASA and he says someday we'll go to school using televisions and stuff. That would be nice.”

The kids were good about keeping their mouths shut. He had impressed upon all three of them that they had to, that if they didn't, he would be forced to get them out of sight somewhere else—and he very much doubted Vulcan was an option at the moment, whatever moment they were in. His future self had told him only that time in the past seemed to disappear. If so, perhaps he would see his family again one day. He had left just after the Rain Festival, while his father and Goran were setting up to harvest carafruit and put in the first of the winter grain. Future Nick had smuggled him a gift, a big ripe carafruit from the family stacks, saying “Remember this when the big bad thing happens, to remind yourself there's a way and it isn't permanent.” He didn't want to know. Maggie's mortality, doubtless sooner than his own, was bad enough to contemplate. The kids...putting little Zorana in her casket that was really a stasis box was the hardest thing he had ever done. Having her here, now, with her own littlest one, was just barely enough to make it all right. She and Skon had come several times before, when the Guardians allowed, to show him all of the babies. Sarek had been so frail that she had needed to wait until he was older than Arre.

Maggie always loved the visits, whoever came along. She was watching from the front door of the diner, two blocks down the street; he would know her shape anywhere and his mind never let go of hers. To think T'Mir had suggested he leave her...

She left the diner and walked up toward him. “I know, not too close,” she said as she moved in.

“It's all right. Half the town is closer to it than I am. Think they're just getting warm?”

“One of these days our kid needs to bring you one of the power undershirts from the program. The astronauts have to stay warm. I don't imagine you could plug in while you're in the mine.”

“Why not? Power cable for the miner, power cable for me.” Her warmth almost reached him as she stood closer. For some reason, women didn't generally handle fire equipment. Future Nick said all of that would change very soon. Once the kids were big enough, she would no doubt enjoy the work. He tweaked the main valve. “Good thing we had the company today.”

“Even with the crowd and all, it sure is.”

“You enjoying the herd we're responsible for?”

“Immensely.” She turned to look at the children all pointing and talking together, including the future visitors, and when she looked back her face had that mellow smile that had melted him to begin with, the contented look that said she had all she could wish for. “Little Arre couldn't be any more like me if she tried. She's a bossy little piece of work.”

“And pretty. She looks a whole lot like you.”

“You didn't know how to flatter me when you started, but you're a quick learner.” She gave him a sidewise leer. “About that _and_.”

“Oh, do I like _and_. Look, I was gonna surprise you--” he stopped as the top floor caved in with a great whoof of sparks, crumbling the roof neatly into the walls and containing its own damage. “That was overdue, but it gave us time to wet down the school. That'll help a lot because the roof tiles don't burn and they'll cut off most of the air.--If we can get this handled, and we actually get to sleep tonight, there's not much room at our place.”

“Noooo, there isn't. The kids are already planning their usual camp out in the living room.”

“The Boy Scouts have a whole camp set up in the school hallway for the stranded ones. They were worried they'd have to move everybody, but it'll be all right now.” He adjusted the primary pump as Billy had the men back off with one of the hoses. “Speaking of...I have a place we could stay the night and not have to sleep behind the diner counter.”

“I was thinking about scooting the kids over on the floor once they're asleep. For sure there are enough adults to watch the lot of...Nick, what did you _do_?”

“You know the patents I sold? The money came in already...”

“Make next year's taxes interesting, but oh, well.”

“Yeah, I thought of that, sent in what we'll most likely owe. I, uh, got more than we expected.”

“Aaaaand?”

“It was supposed to be a surprise. The grandkids really helped a lot.”

“I noticed a lot of coming and going around the...You got the bedroom done!” He shook his head and let her think. “The whole house?”

“I hope we got the furniture right. Future-me told me where the ad was that you'd been ogling.”

She tried not to squeal even if he felt her delight. “If we weren't out in public right now...”

“I believe the expression is 'I'll take a raincheck'? Like tonight, way after midnight...?”

“Oh, Nicky. This was going to be such a hard year to pretend being happy. I hope those poor parents down in the closet...Will they be warm enough? Maybe we should--”

“They'll be fine now. That little girl would have died soon if they hadn't come here, and so would her mother. It only took a couple of reports to get the Navy to vaccinate the hell out of us before they let us go near this planet.”

His other self ambled up. “Interrupting, am I?”

“Not really. Can't do anything fun when half the town would comment. What's up?”

“All managed. Little James is really taken with you, Dreat-Dramma Baggy.”

She giggled. How had he managed to live without that in his life? “There's nothing in the world like a toddler starting to talk. I can tell he was raised around your people, because he's so darned serious about things, but every now and then he just grins and I melt. It's a good thing he doesn't live here in town. I'd spoil him rotten.”

“Don't worry about that. I can't tell you the whole story, but it's a Rana deal. They thought they'd lost him. Spock and Ru and their friend Jim there managed to find him, and so.”

“Jim. Mine, ours. He just found out, didn't he?”

“Year or so ago. He's had a hard life up to now. I admit to deliberately bringing him here by himself so he couldn't depend on Spock the way he usually does.”

“Thought he was the captain,” Nick said to his future self.

“He is. How is a whopper of a story. Still, he convinces himself he's dumb because Spock is so smart, and that's not good. I don't tell him he's smart. I do what we did with Bud, tell him how hard he studied or how well he did the job he was on, and that works for him.”

It was odd to find contentment watching a building burn down, but he had Maggie, and the presence of his older self and the mob of children and grandchildren was too reassuring to allow for panic. The snow helped insulate the town from flying embers; the old clubhouse seemed determined to dispose of itself in the most efficient and compact way possible. The three of them stood by the truck together, Maggie sandwiched between her Nicks. “Usually this is my favorite part of the whole season,” she said. They both raised eyebrows to invite her on. “By this time on Christmas Eve, the diner is closed, the parties are over, the midnight food is all cooked and on the back burners just staying warm, and there's no more shopping or cleaning or even decorating. It's just quiet here in town. Even if you had the urge to run out and buy something, the stores are all closed. What you have is what you have, and you realize how good it is. Church will happen, and then peace. It'll be especially soft tonight with the snow, where we won't even make much noise as we move around. The whole town will be white and quiet.”

Bud flew past them yelping as a snowball parted his hair. “On the other hand,” future Nick said, “we _did_ make these children.”

“Wouldn't have them any other way,” Nick said, and let himself indulge in a grin.

 

“You listened to it.” He had caught her humming “Half My Heart.” Had he not warned her?

She stood in the feathering snow, scarf tied under her chin the way all the women in town wore theirs. It wasn't so different from the older Vulcan women he had grown up knowing, at odds with her youthful face. “It would have been hard to avoid unless I never listened to music feed.”

“But aduna...” What was he supposed to say to her, and what was he supposed to do, here on the back porch of Nick and Maggie's, looking down into the fearless dark void of her eyes? He had made a helpless little gesture with his hands, and she took both of them, the gentle jar of contact no longer painful. _What am I going to do with you?_ The thought brought an answer that wasn't about to be indulged here among the crowd. _That is not what I meant. I mean...now you know_.

“I do. And I am not sorry in the least.” She curled her fingers into the oz'eshta. “We have always known that barring disaster, I would go first.”

“But not now, not soon, not...”

“It happened, adun. The worst happened. Something far worse than your imagined worst happened and you survived, and then you wrote... _that_. All beautiful that. Yes, I did listen to all of it. Yes, I liked it, or I wouldn't have been humming that insanely catchy hook. As for trying to hide it from me, the entire galaxy knows how much John Michael Grayson loves his wife, who used to be dead.”

“Only the Federation.”

“Not according to your sister. She says you'd never have to buy a drink at the Green Star if they found out you wrote 'Colder than Steel.' Even Tal Shiar appreciate that.”

He lifted her by their joined hands. “When we went to New Vulcan for the first time, it was illogical to want you there. I wanted you there.”

“There's a fire up the street and all I can think of...”

“Is there's a fire right here.” He glanced back at the house. “There is nowhere...”

She pulled at his hands. “The garage. Back by the portal.” He followed her across the yard and into the garage, brushing by the boxes and the old car up on blocks, back to where the burlap hung over the rock formation. It wasn't warm, only not windy or snowy, but he began to shuck his heavy jacket and gloves before she had a chance to tear the fasteners.

“Hey, you two.”

They stopped like a pair of guilty teenagers and faced the soft-voiced portal. Amanda stepped up. “Sorry, Chi. It's rather crowded and...”

“Can you two do me a favor?”

He folded his hands in front, willing away the evidence of his lack of control where his wife was concerned. “Certainly. You know how deeply we are indebted.”

“Haven't I told you we are the indebted ones? More so if you agree. There is a hotel in the Pocono Mountains in which a few staff are stranded, but very few guests have checked in. The staff is distressed because they will be unable to leave on this significant holiday and will be making no tips, on which the majority of their wages depend because the owner is a cheapskate. I can drop you off there half an hour ago, so the time involved will not matter, and retrieve you when it looks like morning there, which will actually be an hour from now here. The double time change is just the sort of complex calculation we all enjoy, and if you pay for the room with the twenty and tip the chambermaid that fifty-dollar bill Nick installed in Amanda's wallet at our request, it will make a very great and positive difference in her life through a chain of events, plus give her a story to tell that will also make a great and positive difference to another person who will one day need to hear it. You need only walk up to the door through the snow, then let them believe you left your car and walked up the road because of the snow. Strictly speaking, there is a car behind you, it is snowing here and the road does wrap into the parking lot.”

Amanda hesitated. “We should tell James...”

The voice was warm. “James is so fired by sugar at the moment that he will know but won't mind your absence, nor will anyone else who doesn't put two and two together. Those who do will merely be amused because they are like-minded. He will be cared for should any need arise, which it will not. As on Vulcan, children here are brought up by committee. Take that old suitcase in the corner for appearance's sake and go. Er, Sarek...you might want to keep a hat on until you lock the door behind you, hm? You made a fine Santa Claus. You don't need to start elf rumors.” The portal had the lack of grace to giggle as they bolted through.

 

Kirk looked around the quiet dining room. Most of the travelers had found places to settle for the night, either in the Boy Scouts' impromptu indoor camp or with welcoming townspeople. He sent Chekhov to the fire scene with the big coffee urn. What was left in the smaller one seemed sufficient for the occasional visitor or cop. The family children came in yawning in spite of themselves and sat at the counter with their new coloring books in apparent silence. He felt the undercurrent of conversation without much speech. “Wow,” Bud said, “when the roof fell.”

“Yeah.” Lena made a folding-in gesture with both hands. “Boom.” Between the words, the whole event unfolded in mutual memory.

Arre was left-handed like her brother and twice as determined. She bent her small head over the coloring book, grumbling at her inability to get all of the colors exactly where she wanted them when her paper was moving on the countertop. James watched her for a while, reached over and held the book so it wouldn't slide. When she came to some invisible stopping point, she did the same for him, though he was much less concerned about coloring in the lines and more enthusiastic about the pretty colors. “Crayons are fun,” he proclaimed. “Drawing is fun.”

“It is a lot of work,” Arre said. “Father works. Lots.”

The other twin looked up. “What does he do?”

“Some days he draws letters. Some days he listens to people call each other names.”

Kirk tried not to chuckle at the best definition of diplomacy he had heard lately. “So does my dad,” James agreed. “But he plays music a lot.”

“Our dad plays the radio,” Bud grinned. “But he can sing. He's singing tonight at church.”

That got James' attention. “You play music?”

“Piano lessons. I wanna play accordion. Grandpa was teaching me but he got too sick.”

“Hm. I wanna play guitar. Mikey showed me.”

The Mikey in question appeared on the steps, shy, hesitant and carrying the instrument in question. “Should I some more? I was going over to church later.”

“Yeah!” the kids crowed. Even Arre joined in. Mikey started to look to Kirk, but James patted his knee. “He's okay. He thinks you play good. Daddy was sad and he helped.”

Not reacting to that particular bombshell took all the aplomb he had left, but he smiled at Mikey. “Whatever you feel like playing. How's your wife?”

He sat on a stool, running a thumb across the strings to fine-tune. How often had Kirk watched Spock do that with the same intent downcast eyes? “She's a little better, still tired, laying up there on the bed watching TV. The trip was hard on her.”

James could have been the stranger's child. “But your little girl, she okay?”

The guitar player flinched so hard he nearly dropped the guitar, looking down into eyes as green-gold as his own. “She...yeah. She's _beautiful_.” He looked up at Kirk. “That thing the Navy had, the baby picture thing? Who knew? Gloria was over the moon and so am I. This may be the stupidest thing we ever do, but we're going to do it together and figure it out as we go.”

“Gonna take Maggie up on the offer to help run the diner?”

“It seemed like charity, but this weekend...jeez! She and Nick are working themselves to death since Dad went. It seems like the least I could do, ya know?”

“Believe me, it's not charity. He said this place was rough when they had the bar license.”

“Yeah, it was one reason I didn't want to try to work here. Never trust a drinking bartender, ya know? Way better since they sold the license to Mr. D. and paid off the mortgage.” He sighed, with less of the terrible weight on him. “So that other guy, their grandson that looks like me...?”

“Friend of mine.” _True enough_ , Kirk thought. _The explanation would be far too long_. “We didn't even know we were related until lately. He got all the music, though.”

“I'd say. If we had time, and we could sit and listen to each other...” Mikey shook his head. “He didn't bat an eye at my shell shock. I get the feeling he's been there and done that too.”

“He has. It's for him to explain, but he's...been there, and done that. He was a POW.”

“That'll do it. They didn't have me but a couple of days, and the German army left us and all their wounded Russian conscripts. They didn't want to fight there anyway, so they wanted to help, but they didn't have...neither did we...and it didn't go so good until the Brits got to us.”

“When help comes,” Kirk said, and tried to grin. “When you don't have to be brave any more.”

Most of the adults came back in a herd, stamping snow from their feet and brushing down their coats. Maggie was glowing. “I had no idea that building had to burn down to get the family together, or I'd have torched it myself! Everything all right, Mikey?”

“You're going to be an aunt,” he said. “I mean, you already are, but she's a girl.” She gave him an odd look. “That NASA thing Doc Bones has. Amazing. You can see there's a real baby in there and...how she's, you know, a girl. He's going to leave notes for Doc Cochrane in case he doesn't get back before everyone has to leave. It's complicated, but she has a good chance.”

She threw her arms around him, obviously used to maneuvering around a guitar. “I'd hug Gloria too if she didn't feel so awful. Come home, Mikey, please, just come home.”

“It might be best all around, huh?”

“It is. Absolutely. We need the help, Mikey, can't you see that? Dad tried to tell you it wasn't charity, he was sick, he couldn't help--We need you and Gloria and... and her, we _definitely_ need her.”

“Billie,” he said. “Gloria says she has to be Billie. It's a good jazz name, isn't it?”

“It's a great name,” his Nick agreed as if the words were lumpy enough to choke on.

“You guys gotta help me not screw this up. I could so easy, you know? I gotta take care of Gloria all through and then I gotta figure out the whole dad thing.” Mikey brushed back his unruly hair with a trembling hand. “If this isn't the craziest thing ever.”

“Listen, you,” Nick snorted, “you know how my people are about logic? Was there one sensible thing about me getting together with her? My family had tried to fix me up with every woman around and none of them worked out, but...” he had his arms around Maggie's waist, “her. And the kids. They didn't make any sense and people told us they couldn't happen, but they did and they are and even the one we almost gave up on because she was so early turned out pretty damn good even if I do say so myself and even if she is a lawyer.”

Maggie smacked him lightly over the head as Rana tried not to give in to the giggle Kirk could feel all too clearly. “Don't insult our daughter. Ooh, the time! Anybody who's headed to church needs to be getting ready, and I mean _now_.”


	6. The Great Peace of Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas has finally come in 1966...and then again in 2259. Both are nearly peaceful for the moment.

The Great Peace of Christmas

 

Kirk was used to being an official presence at a variety of religious exercises, ranging from the Klingon Kahless Remembrance to the odd but comforting Andorian Night Watch. Nick hadn't been lying about the length of the service or the amount of repeated kneeling and standing. He had also been honest about the amount of singing, but not its quality. No wonder the S'Harien side of the family had continued to lay claim to their in-law even after both Maggie and T'Mir were gone.

The cast of characters in the warm old church came and went, but Solkar, in all his finery and his most glorious voice, kept on with the service until the last song was sung and the last scripture read. Even in the worst of times, big John radiated contentment. On that night, which seemed to glow of its own accord, he felt happier than Kirk had ever known. When he closed the service, he stepped away from the altar, grinned and said “And here's the announcement we were all waiting for: the fast is over, the feast has come. Let's eat!”

Kirk was a bit confused because they had all been cooking and serving food all day. It occurred to him that he had seen both Nicks and Maggie elbow-deep in batter, dough, beef patties, fried fish, toast, pastries of all kinds and gallons of coffee, but he hadn't seen any of them actually take a bite of food since breakfast, and even that was mostly to make sure what they were cooking was properly seasoned. The kids had been eating, and the adults in the congregation had been nibbling at the cookies the night before. “That's why I go to the other church,” Mikey said with a big grin. “We only fast from meat Wednesdays and Fridays. You ought to see how little is left for these guys to eat during Lent.”

“I've never joined a religion,” Kirk said. “Were you raised over here?”

“Yeah, but I was such a mess when Gloria took me in that I wouldn't have shown my face around church people. Funny thing, when I did, nobody really yelled at me. Her priest said 'You'd be surprised how many people have the same trouble you do. Stay off the hard drugs.' It's not easy to stay out of trouble when you're gigging. Jazz clubs are full of booze, pot and pills and somebody can always find smack if you want it. You tell yourself it's helping your music. It isn't, but by then you're too stoned to care.” He looked across the room to Sarek and Amanda, who had brought James in during the night. “He's not on stuff like me, is he?”

“Not that I've ever known or heard. His problem is his temper.”

“He'd be good to have around in a fight. Man, when he picked up Jeff tonight, that was glorious. Jeff thinks he's all that and he ain't any of it. He's been mean to Bonnie since they got together in high school, but she puts up with his crap because she's afraid of him. Maybe he'll think twice now.”

The crowd migrated to the basement, where an entire row of long tables was set up with every kind of Terran cookie Kirk could have imagined and three times as many he hadn't. The Nicks and Chekhov brought the stock pots of cooked fish. Some people filled containers to take home and some dished up bowlfuls there. “That is _remarkable_ ,” Sarek said. “Romulans would eat that.”

“I know one who does,” Amanda giggled. “But after he does, Lia won't let him back into their quarters for a couple of days.”

“It's some kind of penance,” Mikey said. “That has to be some self-punishment urge we all get. I'll take it easy and eat the wimp recipe on your account, hon.”

Gloria was still wobbly-looking, but seemed relieved. “I'm not so bad now that...everything is better, you know, and a good sleep didn't hurt. Bones gave me some pills for my stomach he says won't hurt her, and they help a lot. Still, I may stick to a few cookies tonight.”

James tugged at her skirt. “Baby is better too. Give her cookies. Billie?”

“For Billie Holliday, yeah. But she doesn't have to be a jazz singer like me.” Gloria looked around. “I'm forty years old and the pipes ain't what they used to be. Don't look at me like that, Mikey, you know it's true. That's why I got no gigs for the last five years or so and ended up being the drink girl at the casino. It was okay while it lasted, but it's past time I moved on from there. I don't mind waiting tables. I do mind having wannabe mobsters who ain't even made men acting like they own me. The good guys tip nice. The jerks don't tip at all. I can handle the diner a whole lot better.”

“You'll be busy for quite awhile,” Amanda said. “Of course, you would be even if you didn't work at the diner when you can.”

Gloria smoothed down the front of her dress, curving her hand around the tiny bump. “Two months further than I thought. She'll be early, not too early I hope. He said we should try to get to the end of April.”

Future-Nick's face didn't change, only his eyes and only for a fraction of a second. “Don't worry about it Gloria, you got this. You already know she's pretty. She's going to be healthy too.” Kirk decided to ask him about it later, because tonight wasn't the time for anything that didn't involve cookies and happy people.

 

Christmas morning's first light found Nick in his new bed, waking to the sound of the snowplow rumbling through and people digging out their cars. Their testing had revealed the mattress to be more than satisfactory. He rolled over and rubbed his forehead against Maggie's hair. “How's the bed?”

“Perfect. The company isn't bad, either.” She looked up at the ceiling. “He did a really nice job on that. Glad he used gloss. I hate painting ceilings.”

“Same here. Are the walls the right color?”

“You must have found my paint chip collection with the notes on them. Nicky, I still can't believe you did all of this. I'm not even going to try to figure out how there had to be a time when it didn't work to have there be a time when it did, or whether that's how it works, or what. You listened. You honest listened and you did this just for me. Even in the future, you're still-- _you_. Every time you come back, it reminds me you still love me even three hundred years from now.”

“I can't see why not. Vulcans don't show it, but once you get under our skin.”

“You got under mine just fine,” she snickered. “I'd suggest a replay, but the kids are going to be awake soon and they'll wonder where we are unless your other self explains.”

“Grab a shower save time, hm?” Yes, indeed. The luxury of standing in a nicely temperature-moderated stream of water had never grown old. The luxury of Maggie in it with him never would. Their knees failed to hold them up and they finished washing up in an awkward heap in the tub, stroking the soap over each other and finally, well rinsed, slapping at the faucet handle until the water stopped. He held her damp and giggly on his chest, their minds blurring together skin to skin. “ _That_. Granted my limited experience, it was never like this before you.”

“Same here, and it wasn't a small selection.” She raked her wet hair out of her eyes and climbed out of the tub, then reached for him and the bright beach towels they liked to wrap up in. “I wish it hadn't been anyone but you. Wouldn't it have been that way on Vulcan?”

“We could have been set up as children, so when we were teenagers, I wouldn't have taken your name yet, but I could call you my wife. We would have learned it all together and no one would have said anything. Unfortunately, until very recently, no one said anything, period. That's how Skon and Rana had three children in seven years when they were in their twenties. Ignorance is not bliss.” He wrapped the beach towel around both of them as far as it would go. “This is.”

“There's a lot to be said for knowing what you're doing.” She used the excuse to towel him off roughly, warming his skin all over again. “You're not getting cold on my watch.”

“Just so that fire siren keeps quiet this morning. We've had enough of that for a while.”

She dodged back to the bedroom. “Best thing about this house: the hallway and our bath are between our bedroom and the kids'. Wait...what are we going to wear?”

“I brought some of my clothing over. You, on the other hand, ought to look in your top drawer.”

She did, finding the underclothing he had planted there and the new dress he had picked out for this morning. The lace bra and panties nearly delayed matters further, but he exercised considerable control and suggested they get dressed and get across the way. Chum was yipping and the rest of both houses' guests were beginning to move around. “Don't let him BS you,” Nick's other self said as he mussed the dog's ears on the diner's back porch. “I fed him. Look out, the little crew is just about to wake up.”

Maggie shook her head in wonder. “Nicky, all the kids are home. Well, Jack won't be until nine or so, but all of them will be here on Christmas!”

“So they will.” Even if the pretty baby they had laid away three years ago was a grown and graceful woman, they _were_ here, all of them. Rana had even brought pictures of little Arre at birth, and of the other children as newborns when they were wrapped in the pink blanket with hearts they had used for Rana's casket. “It's good to know where all the kids are.”

His future self flashed pain for a moment. “Never guaranteed,” he agreed. “But trust that it will be all right. Kaiidth, that it always is.”

“The big bad thing?” he asked softly, and his other self gave him a tight nod. “And it is?”

“Believe it or not, yes. It had to happen, and you won't believe it all, but it works out. Look at them here and remember, and know they'll all be okay.--Merry Christmas, Billy!”

Billy had come up to get something from his truck. “Merry Christmas, Nick, my head feels like a watermelon!” He leaned in and yelped. “Whoooo, that was nasty, forgot the sheep head.”

“No wonder Chum was nosing around it. Well, it won't stink, cold as it is.”

“Yeah, just kind of surprising with a hangover. I think some hair of the dog that bit me won't go amiss.” Billy plodded off to his house through the snow, and they went inside.

The kids had made a heap of blankets in the middle of the floor and pitched an Army surplus pup tent over them by sticking the tent poles in coffee cans of gravel and weighting the side loops down with books. All of them, including Arre and James, had managed to sleep in the uncertain structure. Nick and Maggie were so used to being up absurdly early that they often did rise before the children even on holidays. This morning, they didn't have to go set up the dining room or put coffee on. The other Nick made his way up the steps with a tray of mugs and pastries, properly presenting them to Maggie as she sat in her chair. “It ain't breakfast in bed, but will it do?”

“It'll do,” she said. “You'll do.” She poured a cup for her Nick and handed it to him. “Thank you. Again. For everything.”

Future Nick propped a hand on his hip and looked at both of them fondly. “Thanks are illogical. Anyhow, I ought to be thanking you two.”

Nick sipped the coffee. “How are the downstairs guests?”

“Little one is much, much improved. She isn't even close to well, but she's breathing better and her color is almost normal. Her mother is also sound asleep and healing decently. Her father woke up and asked what he could do to help. I persuaded him to get all the rest he can and think about staying in town for a week or two, at least. Take that long to do a decent job of fixing their truck. Skon took the night watch. He said he's done a lot of it in his time.”

Lena poked her head out of the tent. “Daddy? Is it morning?”

“It is, and I plugged the tree in.” That was the signal for chaos. Nick had wrapped a lot of the gifts in Sunday comics from weeks past, Terran tradition without the illogic of waste. The paper was easy to shred, amusing Chum the beagle no end as he jumped into the pile and snuffled happily. Past Nick disavowed knowledge of how James and Arre might have found presents with their names on. Maggie poked his back. “Old softie.”

“No reason to be insulting,” he snorted, and propped his feet up on the ottoman. The twins caught sight of their big tin playhouse, half hidden behind the tree. The squealing was epic and drowned out his quiet “When did _that_ show up?”

“During your religious service, along with your priest, who was greatly relieved that things were progressing on schedule without him,” Skon said. “Billy had to go get his sister from the station and it was there. I took the liberty of assembling it, which, I admit, was a bit of a challenge.”

“Meaning I'd have been swearing my head off?” Skon nodded. “Better that way then.”

“I suppose we should be going soon,” Sarek said after an hour or so.

“I suppose,” that year's Nick agreed with barely veiled reluctance.

Maggie, wrapped in her new robe as she watched the kids, sighed. “You can't stay, I know that, but it's not as if you can't—Now who in the... _world_ is that downstairs?”

 

Sarek had heard about angry Terran mobsters, and he had assumed the descriptions were overblown, but the evidence before him suggested otherwise. The man who had invaded the diner was indeed wearing an elaborate suit of material that appeared to be of fine quality, topped with an equally tailored and detailed overcoat and silk scarf. He was wearing sunglasses in spite of being indoors, and he had accosted Dr. McCoy, who was unhappy about that on several levels since he had a hangover Sarek could feel from ten feet away. “I am not hiding anybody. Now tell me who you want to talk to.”

“Don't play dumb! Hey. You.” He moved in on Sarek, appearing to miss the details entirely which was not surprising considering the level of hangover the visitor was carrying. “You owe me a thousand. Mr. D is out in the car waiting for it.”

“I owe you a thousand dollars?”

The visitor fumbled, clearly mistaking his question for a request for an account statement. It appeared he had begun to realize that he was physically outmatched. “You paid back...some. Ya din't pay up all of it and I need it now.”

Mikey descended the steps tiredly. “Sorry, man. Guido, quit hassling these guys.”

Guido's head whipped back and forth between the two of them. “What the hell? There's two of you now?”

“He's family. Not my fault we look a lot alike. Your beef is with me. You can have it tomorrow.”

“No. I gotta have it now or else.” He reached for his lapel.

That would do. He wasn't about to let Guido grab for what was undoubtedly a weapon. The man was easy to lift, hard to restrain. Oddly, he abruptly stopped squirming and put his hands over his head.

“Jeez, kid, we was just...I was collecting, see?”

Chekhov stepped around where Sarek could see him, holding the revolver in a creditable manner. “Dat is a wery odd way of collecting a debt on Christmas morning.”

The man sounded much more reasonable, even conciliatory, and he did not put his hands down as the door jangled again. “Yeah, but he ain't paid me, and Mikey's gotta pay up or else.”

“Or else _what_?” demanded a voice over Sarek's shoulder. He did not lower the angry man to see who it was, trusting that his mother or someone else in the growing crowd would take care of it. However, the effect on the angry man was a bucket of cold water in the face.

“Uh, nuthin' Mr. Delvecchio. I, uh, was collecting, and you know, gotta do what works.”

“It don't look like that works so well for ya, now does it? Easy, kid, ya done perfect but I got this.” Chekhov, pleased with himself, lowered the gun and backed away, looming in the corner. The speaker was an elegant elderly man in a dark suit. “Collecting, Guido? Like yesterday when I told you quit hassling the roulette croupier, pay what you owe me and get out, and you begged me for another day so you could ask around and get it? I said yeah and even told you sure I'd come with. Now I know why you were so determined to come up this way and stop at Maggie's place soon as the road opened.” He poked at Mikey for emphasis as he spoke. “You were out to hassle Mikey for what _you_ owe _me,_ and if you didn't find him here you were going to shake Maggie and Nick down for it. That's a bad idea, but you don't know Nicky and you don't know what happens to people who cross him.  Look, Guido, your boss and I go way back. For him, I have respect. You, I don't know from squat.” He had moved around to lean on the counter beside Mikey, casual as if it were perfectly normal to interrupt a strong-arm robbery. “Mikey, I bet we can settle up peaceful and make this okay. How much you got on ya?”

“Let me see, Mr. D.” When Mikey reached into his pocket, his eyes widened. His thin fingers extracted a small stack of folded hundred-dollar bills. “Uh. This...” He handed it over.

The old mobster riffled the hundreds. “I count a thousand, don't you, Guido?”

Guido was a bit short on air, but managed to squeak “Yeah, Mr. D.”

“So you and Mikey, you're square, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Since he looked disposed to obey, Sarek set him down.

The older man slipped the stack of bills into his wallet. “So now you and me, we're square too. You're gonna go out of here to the station and get on the first train headed toward Philly, and you're not going to bother these nice people any more, you got that? Now go. Scoot.” He glared until Guido had turned the corner in the direction of the station. “He wasn't getting the car. Mikey, I didn't know you had a brother.”

“Cousin, and does he ever come in handy. Mr D, I'll pay you whatever you--”

The older man held up a hand. “Mikey, I know how much you paid him. You owed him a thousand to start with. He got half of it already just like you said. He owed me more than that, but I got what it was worth out of him. I know how much he _told_ me you paid him. He didn't think I'd check. He really didn't think I'd hear about the croupier. I don't let these guys that ain't even made men act like that around my place. We're good, and you heard him say in front of everybody you and him got no beef. Him and me? I'm gonna have a talk with his boss, because Chichi and I were kids together. If it weren't for you being straight up with me about how he was treating that poor woman, I wouldn't have found out what a louse Cheech hired or how bad we were all getting took. _This_ guy, now.” He looked up at Sarek in admiration. “You ever want a job, you come to me, right? Mikey will always know where I am. With you at the door there'd be no trouble around my place downtown.”

“But Mr. D...” Mikey looked mystified. The older man smiled.

“Nick clued me in about how he needs help here. What, you're too lazy to help out a relative that's busting his butt? It's half an hour to the Burgh from here. There's always session work and lots of jazz clubs, including mine. The highway goes in, it won't even be that long a commute. Get your lazy...” he glanced around at the women present, “ _backside_ up here and help them with this place before they kill themselves trying. Two or three jobs are enough for anybody! Speaking of that, I hear Gloria can do with a lot less work for a while, yeah?”

“Um...yeah.”

“Then get up here and work so she can take the time off she needs! You'll be down to the gig on New Year's. My bass player quit because of how Guido was treating him. We'll talk, hey?”

“That sounds like a good idea, boss.” Mikey began to walk him to the door. “I still don't get how...the money, I mean, I don't get how it...”

“It's Christmas, stuff happens. Reminds me of when Cheech and I were broke kids and we were the best pickpockets in Philly.” He looked around. “Maggie, Nick, sorry about all this. We're good, right?” Nick nodded. “You and all of yours have a great Christmas, yeah?”

“Same to you, Sonny, and say hello to Cheech for me.” Nick watched him to the car in the driveway and closed the door. “Ho-ly...”

“I will never understand the sanctification of excrement,” Sarek said. It was funny. Most things were funny. Except maybe the mobster trying to extract undue amounts of money in repayment for a dubious loan. That wasn't funny. His getting caught was. “I don't think Guido will return.”

“I don't think so either,” Mikey agreed. “Man, you are handy. I wouldn't have had the... _guts_ to grab him like that. Did you know Mr. D was behind him?”

“I was not aware of that, but Chekhov was armed. Guido was an insignificant threat at best.”

“You don't understand the mob. I thought Nick having that discussion with me was intense, that was...whew. This year, man. My dad dying, no surprise but still my dad, you know? Then Gloria...and we wanted, but how could we...I thought Guido would...”

Maggie patted him. “He won't now. So, you're going to come up here and help us, right?”

“I might get her mom to help pack up our stuff so we don't have to go around Philly for a while, but if we can find a place in town.” Mikey went back toward the upstairs bedrooms, doubtless to explain to Gloria. He saw the man's trembling hands and understood; hadn't his looked like that the day Amanda came back? Second chances were hard to believe.

The small living room was crowded, not in an unfriendly way. Mikey, with his pale but overjoyed wife in his lap, looked over with a grin. “There's another guitar in the closet.”

“Is there.” The guitar in the closet wasn't left-handed but was almost in tune and didn't take much to fix. He could flip it over and play it the way he did his grandfather's. Mikey had brought his electric bass and acoustic guitar. “How many carols you know?”

“Not many, honestly, in Stand...English.” He did know a good one, no religion or lack of same would mind it. “Dona nobis pacem?”

“Yeah, but what are the rest of the words?” Nick chortled. The sense that the very air around them had lightened was illogical, but undeniable. Both Nicks were outwardly calm as they sang in a glorious strange stereo. Sarek felt their echoed relief as well as their great warm rush of love for Maggie. She was so tired she was almost asleep in her chair, reduced to humming along as they sang one carol after another. All of the children had climbed into the recliner with her and found places to nestle. He sensed Rana's wish that she could do the same. Watching his grandmother with all of her children around her reminded him that his wife might have that sense of fulfilled peace when Spock came in and would allow herself to feel it without shame.

Where _was_ the shame in it, after all? Had Nero's love for his wife and child caused va'Pak, as some of the Kohlinahri thought, or had it been the fault of those who lied to him? He recalled old Ambassador Spock, who assured him that he had also been a fiery child of Sarek ever at odds with his sire. Even broken by the disaster, the old man had owned that edge, transformed into a sharp tongue and wry humor that caused much silent amusement in the group of old men who gathered at his house to play board games and argue. He missed that Spock, had since the day the frail old friends had asked him to come over right away. That son of his other self, in his last moment, laid a gentle hand to his arm and murmured “Sa'mi”--not the officially mandated o'sa'mekh, honored father, but the pre-Reform word that amounted to Dad. Spock's katra had transferred like a wisp of smoke drifting from his shell, and it was not until then that Sarek understood the other's child who wanted so much for him to understand his own.

Letting go of him had been difficult. The small memory box bequeathed to his own Spock sat on his desk for several days because he found himself loath to send it on its way. His workload on New Vulcan was so overwhelming that Soval and Mavar volunteered to make the trip to Yorktown with the old man's effects for his other self. No one accused Sarek of having deficient control; breaks were too common in these breathtaking, chaotic days of too much change.

Two days after the funeral, grandfather Solkar came to him, sat for a while, and said gently “It's time.” They went to the repository and tucked that Spock's soul away with the family vrekatras. After, he had needed to sit on the back of one of the springhouse benches for an hour, letting his fingers run over the harp with no aim in mind and thinking _Oekon, my old son taught me how to bring up the young ones, if only I could learn_.

Yearling James had wobbled in, perhaps brought by the music. He didn't try to grab at the harp, or even crowd up wishing to as Spock would have at that age; instead, his curious eyes watched Sarek's hands on the strings. “Sad,” he said.

“The music is too sad for you?”

“No. You sad.” He reached a tiny finger toward Sarek's left wrist. “Why red?”

“A small injury.” When he had set Spock's katra in its crystal, the usual shocks had set it off.

“I fix.” It was an offhand, confident declaration, followed by a gentle poking at the electrical short. To Sarek's amazement, it worked. Apparently, James had been paying attention to much more than met the eye. As everyone had known before his birth, he did have the inborn skills of a traditional Vulcan healer, but not the physical appearance. Was that good or bad?

 _Kaiidth. He is what he is. I tried to make Spock into a Vulcan because he looks like one. I will not try to make James be solely Human because of his appearance. No one is even certain what being a Vulcan now means_. _It cannot mean what it did, but should it ever have?_

 

Nick herded his family and future self out of the diner in the quiet of late Christmas afternoon. The Guardians had told him to be sure everyone was home by four o'clock, and it was three-fifty, the short day's dusk already moving in over the snow, evening fires flecking the drifts with tiny cinders. Their arms full, the crowd trooped back toward the garage in the afternoon light in a mass of thanks and happy chatter about what they had seen and done. Billy leaned on the fence between the houses and reached over to smack future Nick. “Take it easy.” 

“No other way to take it, is there?” He bent down to pet happy little Chum, who nearly broke a tail trying to wag hard enough for two of his favorite person. “Take care of Bill there, Chum. He needs all the help he can get.”

The children had said their goodbyes earlier, but he was summarily tackled by Bud once more. “Remember me when?”

“Always, pizza fool.” Pi'sa'fu. Their personal joke.

Maggie hugged everyone who could stand it, and he barely managed not to. The party stepped through the portal one by one, swimming into the distance and waving as they walked into the dug-in garage three hundred years in the future. His other self lingered. “Remember,” he said, “it'll work.”

“I'll remember.” He put up the ta'al. “Live long and prosper?”

“So far. Peace and long life, mostly.” Future Nick turned to Maggie. “Well, kid...”

She hugged him hard, snuffling into his shoulder, and kissed his cheek. “You.”

“Always. Seriously, you know I mean it, always.”

She nodded toward the portal. “Who is that?”

The tall, slender woman in her warm dark parka waved, and future Nick's eyes told his past self before his words did. “That's Zora.”

“Can she come here, even for a minute?”

Nick motioned to her, and she stepped through, holding out crossed hands to Maggie. “I didn't want to intrude.”

“It's not an intrusion. I am so glad...” she paused, concentrating. “I saw what he thinks, but you really _are_ that nice.”

“Am I?” She and Maggie shared a look and a giggle.

“There's nothing wrong with that. You're married now. Enjoy. I sure did!”

“Ahem,” the guardian on duty said. “Just for a moment, this time, all right? Nick, you and Maggie have work here that won't need his presence, and he and Zora have work to do there.”

“All right, Chi. You know I appreciate your service.” He and Zora walked through.

Maggie watched after them until the mist left them only shadows in the future. She wiped her eyes and smiled up at him. “How many people ever get that chance, Nicky?”

“I can't think of a lot, can you? You know I'm not much on luck...”

She took his hand as they walked back to the house, sending accumulated joy. “Oh, I understand it's illogical and all.”

“Not even that. I think...it's supposed to be like it is. I am very grateful that I was supposed to be on the ship that day out in these woods.” Chum had been walking beside them; all at once, he and half the dogs in the neighborhood started to bark and whine at their fences.

“Chum, really!--I suppose we ought to take inventory, figure what we spent on all the coffee and pancakes, get our order ready for Monday...”

“There's time for that. Anyhow, if we make it sound really bad on the taxes it'll offset some of the patents. See? I even learned to fudge things with the IRS.”

Maggie's son leaned from the back door. “What's got the dogs crazy?”

“I have no idea.” They walked through the hall and kitchen to the front windows. Two cops were running up and down the sidewalks, obviously looking for someone. “Uh-oh.” He opened the door. “Bob! What's up?”

“Jeff busted himself out of jail. We didn't want to let him go, mean as he was talking. He went for Bonnie's house, but we ran him out of the yard. Now he's--”

“Bloodcurdling” barely described the panicked howl from Billy's truck. The criminal flung himself out, hands in the air, and dove into the snowbank. Bob the cop, puzzled, looked into the truck, shrugged, and held up the sheep head.

The cops bundled Jeff into the back of the state trooper's car, doubtless for deposit at the bigger and better-secured jail in Butler. While he watched them drive away, Nick realized the visiting Vulcan man had come up to stand behind him. “This,” Mitik observed, “is a very interesting place.”

“It's not always like this. Sometimes it's even busier. Is everyone doing as well as can be expected today?”

“Rishan is still asleep. She has been so exhausted and sick that I am grateful for her rest. The little one has just awakened, used the inhaler and taken her medications.” Mitik continued to watch the street scene at dusk. “Her mother...it is not logical to feel guilt for a mechanical failure she could not have controlled. She tried to put the ship down in the ocean as instructed. Because we survived, the official censure requires us to spend at least fifteen years here. I do not understand.”

“I'm beginning to,” Nick sighed. “It's political, and nasty, but don't worry about it. The weird reports that seem out of sequence, are. The people who don't seem to belong where they are, don't. The mechanics of slingshots work exactly the way Rishan hypothesizes.”

“I don't know what kind of future Shaishonna can have now.”

Nick looked down at the tile to hide a grin. “I do. Call me a seer or whatever your personal philosophy can accept. She will get well and never really be sick again. She will live a very long life, most of it content, and be more important to more people than you can possibly imagine. You will be around for a lot of it and will regret little, if anything, that happened here on Earth.”

“My being the last son of a modest house, Rishan's being a youngest daughter...life has not been generous,” he admitted. “The service was our path to whatever we might manage.”

“Make sure she gets all the flight instruction you can manage, virtual or otherwise. That reminds me, our children were perturbed that the traveling kids who had to spend the night at the school gym got little playthings this morning, and they got their own, but Shaishonna didn't get to open presents. I took the liberty of keeping a bag for her with a few quiet things she can play with in bed. Also, we can get the three of you better settled since most of our company went home.”

“Sa'mi?” Shaishonna was in the hallway, rubbing her eyes. She was unsteady on her feet, only determined enough to stand anyway. “Is it well?”

“All is well. Mestral has something for you.”

“You are kind.” She took the paper bag gravely with a tiny nod and looked inside. Her hands, already big and solid for the size of her, picked out one of the balsa-wood airplane kits. “Fascinating.”

Mitik knelt to pick her up and held her for a bit as they both watched the snow. Shaishonna put together the plane, making tiny experimental swoops with it, until she yawned and let her head slump to her father's shoulder. Nick turned from the window as the last light faded. “Why don't you come upstairs? Shai can lie on the couch or check out one of the rooms. I wouldn't wake up your wife, but when she does come out, we'll get her situated too. The beds are soft, but not too soft. My kids are half Vulcan, after all.”

“That is also possible?”

“To make it simple, if the High Council says a thing is not possible, odds are it is. You have not begun to see the amazing things on this planet, let alone all the others. Shaishonna will show both of you, and many others, a lot more.”

“Perhaps,” Mitik said softly, “there is hope after all.”

 

Walking out of the garage from the soft cold evening to bright sun was odd. The temperature was the same, the yellow house recreated on its old footprint. The diner hadn't been there for centuries, nor was there much sign of the mine's buildings that had been so busy in its time. The white spires of the new development crowned the hill. Kirk looked down, half afraid he was about to step on the beagle who wasn't there. Everyone else walked ahead, as it always seemed to happen, leaving him with Nick—he caught a moment of Sarek thinking _because you understand him_. “He's buried under the porch,” Nick said.

“Dummy me, I was looking for him. Two days and he seemed to be part of me. He was special, wasn't he?”

“He lived another eleven years. Fifteen was a good life for a dog, especially way back then, but one morning we were sitting out here and he fell asleep beside me and never woke up. I've had other dogs—three generations of his pups and still have his clone, Bubba, he's asleep on the front porch—but none of them quite match up to Chum. Maggie doesn't mind that I'm glad to visit him, too.”

“Something else really got to you. Past you was a lot happier, present you, not so much.”

“I'm an old idiot, that's all. Probably need to meditate a bunch more.”

He wasn't an idiot, and meditation wouldn't cure painful knowledge. He was all too familiar with Spock's attempt to mask bad news. “Wanna tell me about it?”

“Gloria and Mikey. He's so happy right now, he will be, his little girl...Zef Cochrane's mother, don't know if you clued in on that. If they hadn't had her, well. Gloria wanted her every bit as much as it seemed and she was so happy and relieved to have an excuse. Doc Cochrane was able to handle the delivery even if it was tricky. Everything was good then and for the next four, almost five years.”

“And then.”

“One morning while Mikey was downstairs in the diner, Gloria fainted. She hadn't been feeling well, but it didn't seem that serious to anyone but me and I was hoping to be wrong. I wasn't. Her heart gave out, old damage from strep throat when she was a kid. Maggie called the squad, but there wasn't much they could do. Wouldn't be even now. I couldn't have told him or then-me that. He wouldn't have wanted to hear...well, any of it, especially that she was his first wife, not his last.”

“Oh?”

“Bonnie divorced Jeff while he was in jail. He kept getting in trouble, wound up doing a long sentence, eventually drifted off and got into all kinds of stuff he couldn't get out of. She and the kids had a hard time for a while, not much we could do to make it easier. When Gloria died Mikey was so-- you saw Sarek when Amanda was dead, and that was the tip of the big Vulcan iceberg. Think of it all on the surface. If not for Bonnie--they married and had one son together, brought up all five kids as a yours, mine and ours family, they all turned out decent. The ours one had a daughter who worked at Cape Canaveral. She married a boy from down there name of Charlie Tucker. The First, not that he knew it then. So, it had to happen the way it did, but that doesn't mean I had to be glad about it.”

“Guess not.”

“Billy had been hurt several times in the mine. Some of it was the company a lot of it was his own fault, but it all hurt even though we did the best we could for him. He drank more and more as time went on. One night when he was seventy he was coming up I-79 from Pittsburgh loaded to the gills, tried to get off on the new exit and drove off the side of the road. Broke his neck.” Nick sighed.

“And your heart.”

“I could lie about control and logic and all, but you know.” He tapped his chest. “Kept him right here for a long time till he was sure about the afterlife being okay. After we got the vrekatra niches, we put him there. It got easier. Not easy.” He grabbed Kirk around the shoulders roughly while he looked off at the new buildings in the distance. “So don't do anything to get yourself done in again.”

He hugged Nick back, mindful of his old advice that rough night on ancient Vulcan. “Got it.”

 

“This,” Rana said, stepping back from her father's basement workbench, “is the best I can do with the supplies I have here.”

“It is entirely suitable.” Sarek palmed the objects and nodded solemnly as they walked up the steps. “Your service honors me, Mother.”

“What you mean is 'thank you,' so you are most welcome.” She looked out to where Skon was showing the herd of local children how to play punchball on a basketball court. Some of the taller boys almost managed. “He still moves quite well for a hundred and twenty-four.”

“Indeed. He bears a strong resemblance to his forefather Mitik.”

“He also takes much from his maternal line. It was pleasing to see his mother again even as a child. I was always fond of Shaishonna, whatever she may have thought of me.”

Rana's face had not shifted, but had the universe? “ _Fond_ , Mother?”

“Fond. I have had a number of startling conversations with osu Surak after the Great Rescue, most of which center around the proper interpretation of the Kir'Shara, or, more to the point, my improper interpretation thereof and what I should do about that. Accepting the true nature of my own being has not been easy. Accepting the continued presence of High Command contamination in the Council of Elders, and that those elders, my old Kohlinahri heroes, I trusted implicitly were lying mentally, has been even more difficult. That they wished to make me hate Lia...”

“She would not lie to you.”

“I do recognize that now. The sermon we heard—an interesting tradition; I expected religious platitude, but was struck by the theme of forgiveness. That has never been a Vulcan custom.”

“Perhaps it could become so.”

“Would you be willing to forgive me?”

Unspeakable. Unthinkable. And yet, necessary. “I would and do.” It seemed safer to look at the punchball game than to meet his mother's eyes. “That we should have been so wrong, believing ourselves to be so right.”

“Eh, we are not the first. If Terran history teaches nothing else, there is that.” She lifted her chin. “Green hills, in summer, and this strange blue sky, and now in winter, snow. For a hundred years I have been coming to this planet from time to time, so loath to notice anything because it was not Vulcan. Now there is no Vulcan, and this is also mine, and I did not realize so. There is much to learn, Sarek'kam. Not only diplomacy...but the art, and the music.”

“I know my music has often displeased you.”

“Yes. That was also incorrect. As for the way I treated Spock, not to mention my own kin Amanda, that may take a lifetime to undo, but I am willing. Of such must the Confederation be made.”

His throat had dried out. “Just so.” They might have said more, even too much, had the entire herd of Hope-children—the town's post-va'Pak toddlers, all nearly of an age— charged by, chasing a giggling James and Arre. Lia's little daughter vaulted the back fence like a deer and cut off their escape, which caused even more subdued merriment and not at all subdued mock combat. Rana surveyed the situation with a lack of alarm that was entirely new and a lack of comment that was more so. “A new world?” Sarek asked.

“Just so,” said his mother.

 

The Capellan ambassador had calmed down by the time Skon spoke with him on the evening of the twenty-fourth. It was remarkable how much he had mellowed after he found the miscreant was not, in fact, any of the Starfleet officers or Vulcans. “Perhaps we can attempt another meeting next week,” the ambassador suggested as even his curled horns seemed to droop.

“Perhaps. I believe we will be available on Monday.”

“That should be acceptable. The Terran holidays will still be ongoing, correct?”

“They will, but the major ones should not be problematic. Christmas will be celebrated this weekend, Kwanzaa does not require much time off and New Year's will be the weekend after.”

“Ah, most convenient. We will meet on Monday at the usual time, then, and, ah, we will, er, attempt to have less interesting negotiations. It may be that we were overzealous in our pursuit of our Coridan interests.”

“We will consider that and our own potential excesses. Until Monday, then.” He cut off the call and sat back on his father's Terran-style sofa in front of his very Terran-style Christmas tree. Beside him, Rana was fiddling with a small inlaid tuning key. She put it away and folded her hands on her lap. The couch was more than adequate seating for at least three people, yet she had chosen to sit so that their shoulders touched. He looked over at her. “I believe it is Christmas Eve.” 

“So it is. To think we are in the old fire station's parking lot.”

“We are. Was that visit not an extraordinary experience?”

“Just so. Mother is always so glad to see us.”

“You contemplate how different your life might have been had you been born healthy.”

“Indeed. Yet, when my brother and sisters were red-blooded and round-eared, my appearance would have caused inevitable problems that might not have been remediable. The way it worked out may have been the only viable solution. Chi hinted as much.”

“Illogical or not, regret is inevitable in some situations.”

“I have repeated opportunities to see and talk with my long-dead mother. As did you, this time.”

“A gift I did not anticipate, but for which I am deeply grateful.” He didn't try to restrain the smile. “Even as a small girl, she was indeed herself. Seeing my grandparents again was also most agreeable.”

“Rishan was an extraordinary woman, and as for Mitik, I saw much to admire in him.” She reached over and deliberately linked their fingers. “All of our children have made contact today.”

“They have. Arre is with her grandfather at the children's party, is she not?”

“She is. I did not think you would mind.”

“I do not. She has managed to have two of those parties in a day or two. At least this one will not feature so many sugary treats. The altered recipe for fruit and spice cake is quite good.”

She stroked his palm in a deliciously warm way. “I rather enjoyed the effect the older recipe had on you.”

“You would. Pity that party is a short one.”

“Ah, but there is nighttime.”

“Just so.” He slid his arm around her, drawing her head to his shoulder. “I believe this is the accepted Terran style of contact.”

“It will do whether or not it is accepted.” Her contentment was palpable, wrapping around him like a second coat. “Skon, I have been less than a decent wife to you. I wish to remedy that in the coming years.”

“You have been the wife I wanted.” He nuzzled her hair. “If you plan to be better to me, I will be _most_ intrigued.”

“That fruitcake,” she said. “Terran wheat flour. Klingon grapes. Sunberries and cherries, in harmony despite their origins. So it must be.”

He was well aware of the expression. “Are you saying you're my fruitcake?”

“Maggie would say the Trellium-D has left me as nutty as one. Usefully so, I hope.” She nibbled on his ear, sending a pleasant little shiver through him. “Soval called today.”

“He is well?”

“He has concluded that he does not need to be ashamed of the loss of control he suffered at the hands of the Andorians; therefore, he needs not hide away in the Embassy. He and his wife enjoyed Dubai greatly, and her facial scars did not occasion the comments she expected. I have been trying to tell her that is the case. She has consulted a Romulan surgeon to see whether some minor procedures might make her more comfortable in public. I am grateful they...hm. Survived? Survive now?”

“Yet another case where verb tenses seem inadequate for their task. Times have changed, we have changed, and that is far from a terrible thing all told.”

“Perhaps,” she said, and leaned more heavily against him as she looked out the window, warm in the best of ways. “The sense of community was remarkable in those days, was it not? Vulcan was so at one time. Of course, it was also ridiculously violent, but osu Surak and t'sai Shaara say the festivals were always joyous in spite of whatever else might have been happening.”

“An interesting thought: if the Rain Festival is held on New Vulcan this year, as the younger people wish, it may actually rain if it is not snowing.”

“Yet another world to learn about. T'Khasi will return from her present limbo, and there will be still more readjustments. We were so accustomed to a set pattern that all the Council of Elders had to do was argue endlessly over whether a new thing was or was not permissible. All too often, we forbade it because Surak did not have it. He is generally not receptive to such prohibitions.”

“As I believe he said on the last such inquiry before, 'Rana, ko'fu'kam, you could be such a wise woman, but you are certainly not acting like one.' I believe the general was more forthright.”

“You mean 'Damn, girl, you have common sense, use it!'?” She sighed. “Illogical remorse. The only possible course is to move forward, make amends and hope our older daughter does not take the old regulation literally and have me beheaded and barbecued.”

“They only do that to sheep now,” he said. “Or perhaps Capellan ambassadors.”

Before she could answer, or choke back her laugh, children spilled into the living room in a flurry of excited talk and minor disputes. Parents retrieved theirs before they could get away into the rest of the house as John and his wife stood among them like beachwalkers just past high tide. John had his little stepdaughter on his hip. “Arre got to see her grandmother. One day could I see my father?”

Skon wanted to wince, but his father took the question as calmly as she had asked it. “We'll ask Chi what would be a good time. I hope you can.”

“If I did see o'sa'mekh, you would still be my sa'mi, right?”

“Always, Cor'kam.” He bent his head to be nose to nose with her.

Arre was carrying her goodie bag like a purse as she climbed over her mother and shoved aside a fold of Skon's robe so she could nest between them. He looked down at the small warm weight of her. “Do you require bedtime, ko'fu'kam?”

“No, I require this spot,” she said. “I am observing the pretty lights.”

“Nighttime will come,” Rana said, “soon enough,” and Skon thought back his agreement.

 

Wherever they happened to sleep, James was as regular in his habits as a small, obnoxiously friendly alarm clock. For years Sarek had tried to get up, meditate, tend to his personal needs and find Amanda's breakfast before the usual tide of work began. During his exile from life after va'Pak, he had become lax in the timing of his morning routine. James' arrival had changed all of that. As he dressed, he heard the usual round of toddler greetings to everything alive in the house. Nick and Zora were up already, adding to the list. “Good morning James. Merry Christmas.”

“Ya! Happy!” At that age, Spock had been much more careful and sparing in his speech. James had the same lack of vocabulary, but more will to find a way around it and less compunction about making phrases from any combination of languages he thought might work. With a wisp of horror, he realized that at two and a half, Spock had already been folding into himself without knowing how to shield properly, while James...

...was surrounded not by faintly hostile and disapproving people whose temperament the child could sense all too clearly, but by those who accepted him for who he was. Amanda heard his regret and yawned. “Also don't forget, Spock has that bit of Asperger's going.”

“Which genes he did not receive from a stranger. James apparently takes his social skills from you.” The tiny stampede paused outside their door. He thought _Come in_.

“Good morning o'samekh! Good morning o'ko'mekh! Mey Chrismas!” It was like having a small catapult launch itself onto the bed, aimed in Amanda's direction but not sparing accidental contact with Sarek. They had become accustomed to whipping any breakfast tray or teacups out of the way without spilling, which was good because James had no intention of looking before he leapt.

“An interesting holiday. Are you familiar with the custom of gift-giving?”

Amanda shot him a strange look. “I thought it wasn't logical.”

“On Vulcan, it would not be. We are not on Vulcan.” He reached under the bed and handed James the large flat box he had procured in 1966.

“Train!” James crowed. “Gamma Baggy!”

“Yes. It is like the ones she worked on during the war. I had to modify its power supply a bit, but it should be operable.”

Different as James was in personality, he had the same mechanical aptitude as his older brother. Parts flew as he dove into the project, and Sarek had to explain that it might not work put together on the bed, but once he hit the floor with the loop of track he had it assembled in minutes. He couldn't read yet, so he consulted the box lid and set the cars on the track. Sarek rolled over to reach for the power pack he had substituted. “I got,” James said, and set things in motion.

 _Surely he will grow bored. It goes in circles,_ Sarek thought. _On the other hand, there is something oddly soothing about that_. He turned his attention to Amanda. “And for you, this.”

She stared at the inlaid gold ring as he put it on her left hand. “Sarek...?”

“The correct finger, is it not?”

“Well yes but...” She turned her hand to read it. “Three phrases...?”

“Those three persistent questions of yours. Would I marry you again? Do I love you? Will I remember you...after, should that be? You pointed out that va'Pak provided the answers, so I thought you might be reminded of them and not have to ask.”

“Your mother did this.”

“And Father. As always, the calligraphy is his work, the inlay hers. The words are from your favorite lyricist.” _I would. I do. I will_.

 

Kirk was standing on the front porch when Spock walked up to reclaim his spot at Jim's shoulder. “How was the visit?”

“Productive. We would have stayed longer had Nyota's father not been called to urgent business, but as we had done what we intended, it was no matter.”

“Did you get their permission?”

“With surprising encouragement. We had the traditional engagement ceremony. Our Starfleet paperwork has been lost at some point, but that is easily remedied before we leave Earth.”

“He still won't think of himself as a married man until...” Uhura grinned at Spock's discomfort. “Oh, come on, your people are going to have to get used to talking about it.”

“That will indeed be an interesting time in our lives, and that is all I am prepared to say about it at the moment.”

Nyota wasn't letting him off. “Don't his ear tips turn the cutest shade of green?”

“They do. Should we talk about honeymoons and make him try to melt through the floor?”

“So you getting married soon as the city building opens? Get in here. You're going to freeze.” Nick shoved the door open and herded them all in. The family's women were playing poker in the living room, so Nyota plopped down and waited to be dealt in while Spock went to the cooler for a drink for her.

Sarek drifted in and leaned over her shoulder between poker hands, dropping something into her palm. “For the occasion,” he said.

Nyota looked at whatever it was and suppressed a gasp. “Beautiful.”

“Indeed. So is the occasion.” He disappeared upstairs with James.

Nick's wife Zora smiled. “It's fun to watch him try not to be a hopeless romantic.”

“I used to think he was pretty hopeless, all right,” Amanda giggled. “Nyota, you're sunk. Yours is the same way.”

“I should be so lucky.”

“I am,” Zora said. “So are you, don't kid yourself. As for Hana...”

John's wife raised an eyebrow, properly stoic but agreeing with her eyes. “The phenomenon of Terran holiday celebrations has been interesting. Cordais enjoys the parties. I do not mind the religious services. Gift-giving is new to me. I was unsure as to what John might find appropriate that first year. The music store was most helpful. That is also new.” Kirk asked the question with his eyebrows. “On Vulcan, one was expected to know what was on display and what one wanted to purchase. Only the most basic of questions were permissible, as in 'is this sweet or hot pepper sauce?'” Dismay flickered across her face for a second. “Confusing those can be...less than optimal. On our arrival here, I was not yet fluent in Standard. The heat was impressive. John thought it amusing and suggested dousing the noodles in holy water, but as it turned out, sour cream worked well.”

Amanda kept her eyes on the cards. “Did you find out why the k'turr enjoy the sauce?”

Hana fought off a blush. “Its reputed fertility enhancement has not yet happened, but as for the other, it is most efficacious. I do not wish Cordais to be an only child. She is not, since her brother and sister live again and have their own families, but they lived a hundred years without me. When I left for the Andorian War, they were seven and fourteen. They barely know her. A sibling closer to her age would be most welcome.” For a second, a flash of something flicked across her face. “He was a good man, you understand? Older than me, yes, quite a bit, as was common in my town. Respectable, well settled, a Kohlinahru, but decent and even kind. I considered myself fortunate. I did not know fortune. When the Guardians performed their temporal adjustment, I was curious as to whether, perhaps, help might arrive sooner and the outcome of his sudden fatal illness could be changed. It could not, and they tell me that even the remaining point two five seconds to be adjusted will not.”

“The future of Vulcan,” Rana muttered. “We may have choices we do not understand, and we may not. We do not know whether we would undo what happened even were it in our power, and the Guardians tell us we cannot. This, but not that; one thing, not another. For a people used to certainty, we live in such uncertain times.”

“Just so. At least...” Hana hesitated, as if she were on the edge of some precipice deciding whether to jump. “At least I have John.”

Spock had been about to set a small plate of snacks on the table and hand Uhura a cold soda. The look they exchanged as he leaned over her ended all questions Kirk might have had. “Merry Christmas, John Michael,” he muttered.

 _How did you deduce that?_ It was not an outraged thought, but a silent, and sunlit, mental grin _._

_A lot of putting two and two together. Your dad really wrote all of that music?_

_He did. As for the name, Grandfather approaches. Ask him._

Half a second later, John came in, herding Cordais up the steps. “She heard about James' train,” he explained. “Intriguing mechanical things, you know?”

“Good choice.” Nick was in his recliner, idly perusing old vids. “Dinner's in there if you're hungry. Make Jim get the cabbage rolls out for you. Green bowl is his, Jim.”

Kirk found the bowl and handed them over. John sniffed appreciatively. “I thought of the replicator, but that was not appealing. Bean curd?”

“Duh,” Nick snorted from the living room. “The other ones are fake lamb.”

They were, Kirk found, and good. He and Spock joined John at the kitchen table. John looked up. “Oh, that.” If he found anything odd in knowing the unasked question, his face did not betray it. “When Sarek was born, T'Pau did not even consider giving him a name because it seemed unnecessary to her when his survival probability was less than five percent. In my religious tradition, however, a name is necessary. I was about to give him my own, then realized he would need all the help he could get, and so appended the name of the mightiest of warrior angels. Given the events that later transpired with Junior here, I'm not sure that one has ever forgiven me.”

“Good intentions pave more than one road,” Spock intoned, eyes full of the same mischief. “Is that sweet or hot pepper sauce?”

“Hot, I believe.” John handed him the unlabeled bottle. Spock sprinkled some on his cabbage rolls and did the worst job of looking innocent Kirk had ever seen.

 

“That,” Spock said as they all wobbled toward the shuttle on Tuesday morning, “was an extraordinary shore leave. I cannot understand why humans take vacations when they are exhausting.”

“For the love of all that's holy, keep your voice down,” Bones groaned. “It's a simple bit of paperwork, he said. Just a formality, he said. All I had to do was sign as a witness. First thing I know, I was dancing with some woman who looks older than Moses and has been in town for three or four hundred years...”

“Doctor, you're yelling,” Nyota groaned.

“So I am, and it hurts. Is your back any better?”

“The cream killed the itching. I think it was mostly scratches from the wheat stubble.”

“The water,” Spock murmured. “So very cold. I had no idea that small stream was there.” He rubbed at the new ring he wore, which gave Kirk a welcome distraction.

“What do those say, anyhow? The calligraphy is so pretty.”

“Mine says 'Tell her daily.' Hers says 'Of course he does.'” Spock looked down at the ring. “The dark parts are ebony from her family's farm. The silver is stock Grandmother had in her shop, mined on Vulcan. Not, however, a tracking device.”

Nyota did her best not to laugh, muting it to a snort as she held her forehead. “You're such a dork, adun.”

They had already bidden farewell to James and Amanda. Sarek and Rana were on the front porch in a state of gloom. “We will be meeting with the Capellan ambassador and his staff today,” Sarek sighed. “Kaiidth, but he would be better roasted. Spock, a moment?”

Spock turned back. Sarek pulled a few small flat envelopes from his sleeve nd handed them over. “Really.”

“Some are very old seed from the company store. The rest I obtained from the store in town. I believe these varieties are no longer available on Earth. Nick has kept one of each for the garden here, I am taking an equal amount to New Vulcan, and these should do for the ship.”

“Indeed. I shall plant them immediately.”

Sarek hesitated, gripping the gatepost in a way that should have been called nervous. “Spock. I have made many errors in your youth. The matter of how to bring up James...”

For once, if only for once, the warmth in Spock's eyes and voice were unmistakable. “I trust you.” He held up the ta'al. “Live long and prosper.”

“Peace and long life.” Sarek turned to go back to the porch, muttering “It had better be. Someone has to be ready to deal with your brother.”


	7. Epilogue: Christmas Eve, 2305

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a few loose ends tie themselves up. Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and the best of wishes to those who don't.

The big man donned his brown robe and called the office lights off. "Tree up," he said, and the hologram in the window sparkled. Satisfied, he turned to the door and banged his head on the edge of it. "Hm. Well. It wouldn't be Christmas Eve if I didn't run into something."

The little girl outside folded her arms and tilted her head. "Sa'mekh, I believe you are still most clumsy."

"Unfortunately. I don't believe my brothers and I will grow out of it, either. Spock said they were slightly delayed because he and Jim managed to injure each other in the gym again." He closed the door behind him, not even catching his robe in it. "You are concerned, ko'fu."

She did not deny it. Since she had passed her kahs-wan, small Rishan had been exceptionally Vulcan. This small concession was her first in two exceptionally responsible and logical weeks. "I am. Fa'ko'mekh Amanda is not young or...or well."

There was no use sugar-coating that, either. Granted Amanda was only a hundred and eighteen, she had suffered more than one health scare in the past year. He tried not to think about it, and that denial might have been his own most Vulcan moment. "No. We have been fortunate to have her with us."

"Do you think that...if she is not here when I have children...the Guardians would let us show her?"

The comfort in that idea was enough to make him smile. "All we can do is ask, but the answer has nearly always been 'yes.' In fact, I would be surprised if she hasn't already asked." They crossed the street from the office, and Rishan looked up into the last of the twilight. "The snow may be a little early. It was due in five minutes."

"I do not mind if it is imprecise." She reached out to catch a fat white clump of flakes. Instead of going straight up the sidewalk of the big blue house, she paused and looked across. "The diner was there, and the mine."

"Just so." He walked down to the corner with her. She looked up and down the quiet street, crossed and stood on the sidewalk.

"I can imagine...or do I?"

"More likely, you feel the flow of time. What was, still is, in some way. Out of reach, perhaps, but not out of mind. They were, you are, others will be, and as long as we remember, none of it is ever truly gone."

"Even foremother Rishan?"

"Especially her! She and her mate were very brave to come across the continent in that very old vehicle. They wanted the very best for their little girl, and they got it, did they not?"

She gave that a moment's thought. "Except, perhaps, for the baccala."

"I agree," said her mother. Cordais had caught up, also earlier than expected.

"Corky, you're like the snow," he said, taking his wife's hands. "Early and welcome."

"James." She was better at packing love and exasperation into a single word than anyone he knew. She brushed her fingers over the tiny scrape on his forehead. "Shall we?"

Rishan didn't need to hear the rest of that thought, so he grinned at Cordais. "We were reminiscing. Do I smell nut rolls?"

"You do. Your brother has been baking extensively and may have kept ahead of his family's depredations of the cookie table. Your other brother and his wife will be beaming down momentarily, having plundered his plant laboratory of what I understand are extraordinary berries, provided Nyota can keep Admiral Jim from eating them all. As for Nick, he was busy in the past again and I fear he may have gone shopping at a store that was about to cease operation. Zora made a rather ominous mention of accessories for your model train. As for your father, he has composed a new piece of music with the assistance of a bottle of sweet port wine. This may be one of the more interesting celebrations."

"I don't remember, but Mother said the year after the Great Rescue was entertaining. The retrieved people were so grateful that they decorated the consulate with every winter Terran holiday they could research in joyous haste, which somehow led to a ten-meter red and green menorah, quinoa raisin cookies and sweet bean pierogies for anyone they could lure into the building. Our rather eclectic family gathering is unlikely to top that."

"I would not mind if it did. Chaotic though they may be, S'chn T'gai gatherings are always entertaining." 

Nick Mestral leaned out of the front door of the big blue house. "Come on, you two. The snow's starting and so is dinner."

Rishan ran ahead. James and Cordais lingered for a moment, hands joined in the feathering snow beneath the sidewalk light.  "Should we say anything?" she asked, looking up at him.

He laid a hand over the tiny warm bubble at her waist. "Most of them already know. I would bet Fa'sa John even knows he's a boy. He's really good at that. Name him Jhan, do you think?"

"I would like that. Of course, no one will ever call him that because Mestral will give him some mischievous nickname." She stretched up to her toes and pressed her lips to his cheek. "It seems appropriate here."

"It is. By the way, Rishan was planning how to show Mother her future children. Maybe her incoming little brother will change her mind about that."

"No, I doubt it. She's like her uncle Spock, determined to carry the traditions as far as she can. She was a little disappointed that we didn't arrange a bond for her as soon as she passed her test. Doubtless she has someone in mind already. Let us hope we are not grandparents too precipitately."

"All things in due time," James said, and kissed her on the lips that time. "Come on. I want to go play with my Grandma Maggie train." He snugged an arm around her waist and pulled her with him into the warmth of Christmas night.

The End...for now.


End file.
